


You're the One I Have

by toyhto



Category: True Detective
Genre: Also my dudes I'm sorry I made him cut his hair, Fluff, Fluff-ish at least, M/M, More slow than burn I think, Post-Canon, Slow Burn, this is like
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-02
Updated: 2020-05-02
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:14:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 28,612
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23961334
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toyhto/pseuds/toyhto
Summary: Marty helps Rust escape the hospital and brings him home.
Relationships: Rustin "Rust" Cohle/Martin "Marty" Hart
Comments: 14
Kudos: 79





	You're the One I Have

**Author's Note:**

> This feels a lot like fluff. What. Also I have a [tumblr](http://toyhto.tumblr.com).

1.  
  
  
”Marty,” Rust said to him, ”this is your house.”  
  
So, yeah, alright, it was Marty’s house. He drove the car to the front door and stopped the engine. He had practically just helped Rust to escape from the hospital, so you’d think the man would be a bit more thankful and less picky, right?  
  
He glanced at Rust. Rust was staring at him, looking like someone had recently stabbed him in the guts.  
  
“What were you expecting, a hotel?” Marty asked.  
  
“You said you were going to get me a –“  
  
“A place to stay. Yeah. I’ve got a guestroom. Come on, Rust. You aren’t even dressed. What’re you going to do about it, fight me?”  
  
He saw Rust swallowing. “Maybe not this time.”  
  
“Damn right you aren’t,” Marty said and got out of the car, walked around it and held the door open until the idiot stumbled out. He wrapped his arm around Rust’s waist for him to lean on. Rust smelled of cigarettes and hospital, the poor bastard. Marty would have to draw him a bath, yeah, that was probably a good idea. “You’re taking a bath,” he told Rust.  
  
Rust snorted. He was breathing hard even though they were walking impossibly slowly.  
  
“Alright, maybe not today,” Marty said. They walked up the stairs to the front door. He was more dragging than supporting Rust now, but they got through the door and to the living room, where he put Rust on the couch. He had been planning to clean the place before he would bring Rust here, but he hadn’t known the man was planning to escape the goddamn hospital tonight, right? Maybe Rust wouldn’t have energy to complain about the mess right now.  
  
Marty walked to the kitchen and went through the cupboards looking for something to eat. He was sure Rust was staring at him.  
  
“Marty,” Rust said.  
  
“I think I have biscuits,” Marty said, “I bought them yesterday. There’s no way I ate everything already. They should be here somewhere. Just –“  
  
“Marty,” Rust said. His voice was hoarser than usually. “Thanks.”  
  
Marty cleared his throat. “Don’t get soft on me, man. You’ve only been stabbed, you aren’t dying or anything. Look, I found the biscuits.”  
  
He made Rust eat two biscuits and drink a glass of water. By the end of it, Rust was eyeing him with a look on his face like he was thinking about murdering Marty in his sleep. That was nice. Familiar, comforting and nice. Everything would be alright.  
  
He helped Rust to get up from the couch and to the bathroom, and there he watched as Rust brushed his teeth with a toothbrush Marty had gotten from Walmart yesterday. For Rust. He had bought Rust a toothbrush. He was still thinking about that, when Rust glanced at him and asked if he was going to watch him take a piss, too. He backed away and went to the kitchen. He didn’t hear Rust locking the door.  
  
“I could just sleep on the couch,” Rust told him, when he tried to drag the idiot the guestroom.  
  
He licked his hips and took a firmer grip on Rust’s waist. Rust had his arm draped over Marty’s shoulder, surprisingly heavy, all things considered. “You aren’t going to sleep on the damn couch.”  
  
“Didn’t realize you’d be so romantic about this.”  
  
“Just wait for it,” Marty said and pushed the guestroom open. He had already put clean sheets on the bed. He helped Rust to sit down on the edge of the mattress and then squeezed the man’s shoulder. “Alright?”  
  
Rust nodded, raising his chin. “Marty –“  
  
“Don’t,” Marty said, patting him on the shoulder. Nicely. The man had almost died, for fuck’s sake. “This isn’t for you, this is for me. I can’t get a woman to stay here, but you, well, you aren’t going to run to the night. Right?”  
  
“Yeah,” Rust said, “no running.”  
  
“Great,” Marty said. “I’ll be in the bedroom if you need anything. Good night.”  
  
  
**  
  
  
He woke up in the middle of the night. It was all quiet in the house, but when he walked to the guestroom door and opened it slightly, he could hear Rust breathing.  
  
He went back to his bed and looked at the spot of grey light on the ceiling that came through the crack in the curtains.  
  
  
**  
  
  
In the morning, he made coffee and tea and went through his cupboards in search of something that would resemble breakfast. Then he almost laughed out loud when he thought about Rust sitting at his kitchen table, eating breakfast like a normal person. But maybe he’d get to see that damn miracle, unless Rust had after all escaped through the window in the early hours of the morning.  
  
He went to brush his teeth. He didn’t think Rust would do that, and not to him, not after all they had been through this last… fuck, these last seventeen years. But, yeah, that was exactly the kind of a thing Rust would do, the goddamn bastard, and then he would say some shit, like, that he could do this on his own and he didn’t need Marty for anything and they weren’t even _friends_ and this way Marty wouldn’t have to put up with his bullshit anymore -  
  
He rushed to the guestroom door with the toothbrush still hanging from his mouth. Fuck Rust. Only, when he knocked on the door and then opened it without waiting for an answer, Rust was sitting on the edge of the bed, apparently trying to inspect the wound on his stomach.  
  
“Good morning to you, too,” Rust said without looking at him. “Wanted to see I’m still alive?”  
  
“Yeah,” Marty said. “So, there’s breakfast. It’s… I don’t know what you eat. But it’s something.”  
  
Rust grunted. Marty was pretty sure that was supposed to be some kind of a statement about what Rust thought of _eating._ But he wouldn’t ask. He would quietly back away now before Rust would ask him why he had just rushed in or why he was holding the toothbrush.  
  
“So,” Rust said instead, “I don’t have any clothes.”  
  
“Oh.” Marty blinked. “Yeah, of course. I have clothes. I’ll find you something. I’m not sure I’ve got anything that’s the right size for you, man, but I think –“  
  
“Marty,” Rust said, “shut up.”  
  
So, he found clothes for Rust, and then he just stood there like an idiot for a few seconds, until he realized Rust was going to put the clothes on and that he was staring at the man. He turned on his heels and went back to the kitchen. He heard Rust going to the bathroom and told himself that he wasn’t _listening_ , it was just that Rust was injured, and he was a bit worried. But Rust got out of the bathroom alive and then stopped at the doorway, leaning against the frame. He was looking a little pale, and Marty’s t-shirt and sweatpants were too large for him.  
  
“Come on,” Marty said and walked to him. It was kind of surprising that Rust let him settle against his side easily, without a fucking argument about it. Which probably meant that Rust was in a lot of pain, but Marty preferred not to think about that, like he didn’t think about the moments when Rust had been lying on the cold stone floor, bleeding out, and Marty had been kind of sure he’d lost him. He thought he was an optimist but yeah, things had seemed pretty bleak there.  
  
“Marty?”  
  
Oh, shit, he was just standing there, holding Rust’s body against his. “We’re going to the kitchen.”  
  
“Sure,” Rust said and then leaned against Marty like yesterday, while they walked to the kitchen table, where Marty helped him sit down. Rust didn’t say anything when Marty patted him on the shoulder and went to the coffee machine.  
  
“Coffee?”  
  
“I thought you drink tea these days.”  
  
“I thought you might want coffee,” Marty said, poured it in a mug and passed the mug over to Rust. “So, what exactly do you eat?”  
  
It turned out that Rust ate pretty much the same than everyone else. Well, that was weird. Eventually Marty sat down across the table from him and started eating, too. He was hungrier than he had realized. Apparently fussing over Rust took a lot of energy. Or maybe it was Rust’s personality.  
  
“What’re you smiling at?” Rust asked. He was probably trying to sound edgy and ironic, but it came out a bit worried. “Am I looking funny or something?”  
  
“No,” Marty said, “not at all. Nothing like that, man. It’s just, I’m a happy person inside.”  
  
Rust grimaced.  
  
“Yeah, well, we can’t all be like you. Just eat. Do you like the clothes?”  
  
Rust frowned at him.  
  
“You hate them,” he said, and alright, he was grinning. He couldn’t help it. “You think the color doesn’t suit your or something?”  
  
“No,” Rust said and then fell silent. Marty focused on eating. To be fair, the light blue t-shirt probably made Rust look a bit more like someone who had just almost died. Besides, it looked like someone had dressed a very dangerous man in a very sweet color. “No,” Rust said, “it’s just weird, wearing someone else’s clothes.”  
  
Marty took in a breath. “Yeah, well, a lot of weird things have been happening here lately.”  
  
Rust snorted. It sounded a lot like an affirmation.  
  
“We can go get you some clothes when you can walk on your own two feet again,” Marty said.  
  
Rust didn’t say anything to that, didn’t even grunt. Clearly there were weird things happening.  
  
  
**  
  
  
They spent the day at home. The odd thing was that it was kind of comfortable. Rust didn’t talk about voids or the extinction of human race or any weird shit like that, and for a few times Marty found himself wondering if Rust was _thinking_ about those things anyway. Maybe Marty had gone a bit soft in the head, but it seemed better that Rust would speak about it if he was thinking about it. But when he asked Rust what the man was thinking about, Rust said _my wound itches_ , and that was it. No voids.  
  
They watched a lot of television. In the afternoon, Marty made them dinner, which wasn’t much but Rust seemed a little surprised anyway. Then they watched more television and Rust fell asleep on the couch. Marty turned the volume down and watched Rust breathing in and out, his mouth slightly ajar and his neck leaning against the back of the couch in a way that would surely make him ache later. But there was no way Marty was going to try to do something about it. Rust would wake up the moment Marty would touch him, and then Rust would break his wrist or something. Just like he had told Marty he could in that one day in the locker room. It seemed like a lifetime ago. Rust had said something about smelling pussy on him and he had got goddamn angry about that. He had had so much energy when he had been young.  
  
“You staring at me or what?” Rust asked, his eyes still closed.  
  
Marty swallowed. “Of course not. You aren’t any prettier when you’re asleep.”  
  
There was something on the corner of Rust’s mouth that resembled a smile. “Too bad for you, then.”  
  
“Yeah, it is,” Marty said. Rust didn’t open his eyes, so Marty kept watching him, and a few minutes later, Rust was snoring.  
  
In the evening, he picked up Rust’s pills from the pharmacy and some other supplies as well and then stopped at the supermarket, and when he got back, he was surprised Rust was still there. But it was a good surprise. He didn’t know what he would’ve done if Rust had decided to disappear. Wearing Marty’s light blue t-shirt of all things, what an asshole. He probably would’ve gone looking for Rust and then dragged him back, but he didn’t have to, because Rust was lying on his back on Marty’s couch, his bare feet tugged over the armrest.  
  
“Need socks?” Marty asked, walked to the kitchen and started emptying the grocery bags.  
  
“Don’t you like my feet?” Rust asked, but he sounded tired.  
  
Marty glanced at him quickly. “I got your pills. And I guess we should change that wrapping. I’ll help you.”  
  
“You don’t have to do that.”  
  
“I’m going to,” Marty said, putting the cheese to the fridge, “and I don’t think you should fight me about this, because at your current state, you’d fucking lose, man.”  
  
“In my current state.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“So, what’re you saying is that normally I’d win.”  
  
“I said nothing of the sort.”  
  
“Like, that one time.”  
  
Marty frowned at the fridge. He should probably put the older stuff in the front and the new stuff in the back. That was one thing Maggie had always complained about. But it made sense. “I thought we already talked about that.”  
  
“We did.”  
  
“Want to talk about it again?”  
  
“No,” Rust said in a flat tone, “it just came to my mind. Not my favorite memory.”  
  
“Yeah, no,” Marty said, closed the fridge door and straightened his back. There was a postcard on the door. The girls had sent it years ago. “You know what I think? I think that there’s not much point in apologizing if two people are both sorry.”  
  
“Yeah,” Rust said. It sounded like a question.  
  
“Especially when it’s both of their fault.” Marty bit his lip. “I think I wasn’t holding much back there, man. So, I’m glad you were.”  
  
“Yeah?”  
  
“Yeah. Would’ve ended badly for me otherwise.”  
  
“Would’ve took me some effort,” Rust said. “But I wasn’t angry like you were.”  
  
Marty took a deep breath. They’d have to eat soon, but first he’d sit down for a minute. Rust made room for him on the couch, and after that he couldn’t really go and sit in the armchair. He settled himself next to Rust. “Well, maybe you should’ve been angry, too. I just came and punched you in the face.”  
  
Rust shook his head.  
  
“And it wasn’t about you.”  
  
“Yeah, I know.” Rust cleared his throat. “Sounds like you’re about to apologize. Don’t do that, because then I’m going to have to do that too, and I don’t like it.”  
  
“No,” Marty said and leaned back against the couch, “no, I was going to say that you should take a shower or something. You smell of hospital.”  
  
He could hear from the quality of the silence that it had been the right thing to say.  
  
“I don’t think I could take a shower right now,” Rust said finally. “Might pass out.”  
  
“I’d help, obviously.”  
  
“Fuck no. If you’re so offended about my smell, you can go sit somewhere else.”  
  
Marty rolled his eyes and switched the television on.  
  
  
**  
  
  
It took Marty two days to get Rust to take a shower. They kept bantering about it until finally one morning, when Marty knocked on Rust’s door, Rust asked him if he could help a little with the whole shower thing. He did. He dragged a chair to the bathroom and then dragged Rust there as well, because even though the idiot claimed he could walk by himself, he really couldn’t. Not without looking like he might collapse on the floor any minute, and Marty didn’t want that.  
  
So, he helped Rust to the shower and then closed the curtain and waited just outside, telling himself that he was inspecting the content of the mirror cabinet. What he was really doing was that he was making sure Rust wouldn’t pass out or something. If something happened, Marty would be right here. Nothing happened, nothing except unhappy grunting. But Rust didn’t tell him to fuck off, either, which was worrying.  
  
“Better?” he asked, when the water stopped running. He could see through the curtain that Rust was trying to stand up. “Need any help in there?”  
  
“Fuck you,” Rust said, which probably meant _yes._ Marty opened the curtain and tried to help Rust with the towel. They had a small scuffle about it, only they both had only one hand free, because Marty had his arm draped around Rust’s back and Rust was leaning against Marty with half of his weight, and it didn’t seem like either of them knew what they were trying to do with the towel. But in the end, they managed to get out of the bathroom. The couch was nearer than Rust’s room, so Marty walked Rust there and left him waiting when he went to get clean clothes. There was this one dark red t-shirt he had bought years ago, when he had been trying to deal with his mid-life crisis in a constructive way.  
  
“You’re enjoying this too much,” Rust said, when he saw the shirt.  
  
“I’m not enjoying this at all,” Marty said, biting his lip. “I just think that color might look good on you.”  
  
“Nothing looks good on me now,” Rust said.  
  
Marty blinked. There was absolutely nothing he could say to that. Rust still looked barely alive. It wasn’t like Marty was completely opposed to this whole a mustache-and-long-hair thing, no, and it wasn’t his damn business anyway, but ten years of drinking and the recent near-death experience had left Rust looking a little… fragile.  
  
And obviously he remembered what Rust had looked like ten years ago. He remembered that very well, thank you very much, because there had been times when he had found himself staring at Rust, wondering if everyone who saw them together would look at Rust and think that Rust was the handsome one. Because he was. He definitely was. A blind man would’ve seen that.  
  
But that had been a long time ago, and he wasn’t going to start thinking about that now. And he definitely wouldn’t talk about it.  
  
“Breakfast would look good on you,” he said, went to the kitchen and loaded the coffee machine. He knew he was supposed to drink tea these days, but Rust wanted coffee, and he liked drinking coffee with Rust.  
  
He made fried eggs and toast and kept glancing at Rust over his shoulder while he was at it, just to see how Rust managed with the clothes. Everything was too large. Rust frowned at the boxers that were admittedly hanging a bit loose around his crotch, and Marty bit his lips and turned his gaze back to the frying pan. After a moment, he glanced again. Rust looked a little offended about the sweatpants.  
  
They had breakfast on the couch, watching the news and then some kind of a reality show that made Rust mutter under his breath about the idiocy of humankind. Marty patted him on the knee and the muttering stopped for a moment. Small victories, right?  
  
That afternoon, Marty went for a walk around the block, and when he came back, Rust was sleeping on the couch. He went back outside, sat down on the first stair and looked at the yard. The lawn needed mowing. He would do it soon enough. And he would get back to work, obviously, only it was kind of difficult to remember that there were other things to think about. But he would find something to do. He should probably work at home for a while, so that he could keep Rust company. And when Rust would get better -  
  
He frowned. It was too early to think about that. Rust was barely walking now, it would take ages before he would want to move out from Marty’s guestroom.  
  
He heard it through the open the door when Rust woke up. Maybe the snoring stopped or there was the sound of the cushions shifting or something, because when Rust called his name, he already knew Rust was awake. He got to his feet and went back in, and Rust looked relieved for a second before he blinked and asked Marty what the hell he was staring at.  
  
“Just you, man,” Marty said. “Are you hungry?”  
  
  
**  
  
  
“Morning,” Marty said. “Need help?”  
  
“No,” Rust said. He was standing at the guestroom door, leaning against the doorframe with one hand. He was wearing Marty’s red t-shirt again. He looked like he might take two or three steps and then fall onto his nose.  
  
Marty left the newspaper on the coffee table and stood up from the couch.  
  
“Marty,” Rust said in a sharp voice.  
  
Marty stopped. “You don’t look so good, man. Just let me –“  
  
“Yeah, I know,” Rust said, “I know I look like shit. Let me walk to the bathroom myself, Marty.”  
  
Marty opened his mouth and then closed it again. _Goddamn._ “If you fall –“  
  
“Then I’ll let you wipe the blood off my face. Come on, Marty. You can stare if you want, just…” Rust paused and let go of the doorframe. Marty tried not to look like he was fucking worried, but he _was_ , and he didn’t want to see any more blood, alright, he had seen enough for the rest of his damn life. But he stood still when Rust walked to the bathroom door with shaky steps. When Rust reached the door, he grabbed the handle with both hands and then glanced at Marty, almost smiling until he met Marty’s gaze and froze.  
  
“What?” Marty asked, blinking. God, he was relieved. He just wished Rust would let him help from now on.  
  
“Nothing,” Rust said after a short silence. “The chair’s still there?”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“I’ll take a shower, then. Don’t think I’m dead if I’m not out in five minutes.”  
  
“I could –“  
  
“I’m going to jerk off,” Rust said. “Want to help me with that, too?”  
  
Marty blinked. Well, shit. “Sure you can handle that? In your condition?”  
  
“Fuck you,” Rust said, but now he was certainly smiling. With his eyes, if not with his mouth. Marty just knew that. “And don’t listen.”  
  
“Wouldn’t dream of doing that.”  
  
“It’s going to take a while,” Rust said, “in my _condition_.”  
  
“I’ll make coffee,” Marty said.  
  
He didn’t listen, but Rust didn’t lock the door, either. Fifteen minutes later, Rust opened the bathroom door, the towel wrapped around his waist and his hair dripping water onto the floor. He looked like he had run a marathon, but Marty decided not to make a joke about it. Rust asked him if he had more clean clothes, and he picked a nice white t-shirt. Then he helped Rust to the couch and continued making breakfast while Rust pulled the clothes on behind his back.  
  
“You’d make a good nurse,” Rust said in a voice that was a bit too blank.  
  
Marty put the box of cereal on the counter. “Bullshit.”  
  
“I can’t be your patient, Marty.”  
  
“You aren’t my patient. You’re my friend.”  
  
“It’s not like I don’t appreciate it,” Rust said. He sounded like he was in pain. “But it’s been a long time since… it’s a lot.”  
  
“Yeah, I know,” Marty said to the box of cereal and then turned to Rust. The man was sitting on his couch with a suffering look on his face, like he was personally offended of something. Maybe the couch was too soft for him. “It’s been a long time for me, too, Rust. I’ve lived alone for ten years now. I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t know what the hell I’m going to do, either, I feel like this goddamn thing we solved, this case, like it’s eaten my whole life and I can’t remember how to live anymore. And you just almost died. You were bleeding out, man, you were about to die on me. I thought you would. So, can you just fucking let me take care of you now? For a few days? So that I have something to do? Please?”  
  
Rust looked at him for a long time. “Alright.”  
  
“Alright,” Marty said and took two bowls from the cupboard. “We’re having cereal for breakfast.”  
  
“I didn’t almost die.”  
  
“Yeah, you did. I thought I could feel it when your heart stopped beating.”  
  
Rust didn’t say anything to that.  
  
“And that t-shirt looks good on you, by the way,” Marty said, turned and walked out of the room.  
  
He stood at the front yard for five minutes, staring at the clouds. Rust was being a pain in the ass, obviously, but he had a feeling that if he had been in Rust’s place, he might’ve been worse. Just in a different way. He would’ve probably tried to punch Rust in the face for trying to help him or something equally stupid.  
  
He took a few deep breaths and went back in.  
  
  
**  
  
  
2.  
  
  
Maggie called him one morning, when he was sitting on the couch with Rust, drinking coffee. He almost dropped the phone when he saw who was calling. Rust clearly wanted to say that he was being on idiot but didn’t, and he patted Rust on the knee, just to tell the bastard that he appreciated it.  
  
“Maggie,” he said to the phone, “hello, good morning.”  
  
“How’re you?” Maggie asked, with the polite voice that always felt a little off.  
  
“I’m fine,” he said, “yeah, everything’s fine. We’re just drinking coffee and watching television, you know.”  
  
Maggie was quiet after that. Marty glanced at Rust. Maybe something had happened. Maybe it was about the girls. Maybe – “We?” Maggie asked.  
  
_Oh._ “Yeah. Me and Rust. Rust’s still staying here.”  
  
“Staying -”  
  
Oh, _shit._ “Yeah. Maybe I didn’t mention it. He’s been here for a week now. Ever since they let him out of the hospital.”  
  
Rust snorted. Marty smiled at him and then took another sip of his coffee.  
  
“Okay,” Maggie said in her perfectly polite tone. “I’m glad you’ve got company.”  
  
“Yeah, me too,” he said. “It’s been great. We haven’t even fought yet, because he’s still got stitches and all.”  
  
Maggie didn’t say anything to that.  
  
“Sorry,” Marty said, “I make jokes when I’m nervous, that’s just… But I guess you know that. So, how’re you? How’re the girls?”  
  
“They’re fine,” Maggie said, a little less distant now, thank god, “I’m fine, we’re all fine. I’ve been telling them to call you, but you know, they’re so busy –“  
  
“Don’t worry about it, Maggie.”  
  
“I’m glad Rust’s there. Really.”  
  
“Yeah,” Marty said and took the remote control from Rust. The bastard had switched the television off. “I’m glad, too. He’s keeping me sane.”  
  
Rust took the remote control back.  
  
“I just wanted to know how you’re doing,” Maggie said.  
  
“I’m alright –,“ Marty swallowed. He had almost called her _honey._ Oh, god. He cleared his throat and Rust stared at the remote control with a frown, like he had noticed. “You can come for a coffee sometime, if you want, Maggie. To check on us.”  
  
Maggie was quiet for a moment. Rust was quiet too. “Yeah, I might,” Maggie said finally. “Take care, Marty. And tell Rust that I said hello.”  
  
Marty hung up and took his cup of coffee. Rust was staring at the television screen, even though it was pretty obvious the man didn’t care about the local weather. “She says hello.”  
  
“She thinks it’s weird that I’m here.”  
  
“Yeah. Maybe. But she didn’t say it.”  
  
“ _I_ think it’s weird that I’m here.”  
  
“Well, who fucking cares about what you think,” Marty said.  
  
“I’ve been here for a week now.”  
  
“Yeah. I can count, Rust.”  
  
Rust rubbed the side of his nose, frowning at the weatherman. The poor guy didn’t have a clue what was coming for him.  
  
“If you wanted to get rid of me, you could just tell me to fuck off,” Rust said, not looking at him.  
  
“Yeah,” Marty said, “so I could.”  
  
“So –“  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
Rust shifted on the couch. “So, why don’t you just tell me to fuck off?”  
  
“Because I don’t want you to go, genius,” Marty said, took the remote control from Rust and turned the volume up. They were talking about sports now. He wasn’t going to miss that.  
  
“Why the hell not?” Rust asked, sounding angry. Marty sighed and wondered how much angrier he’d be if Marty patted him on the head or something. He had been staying for a week, surely there was no reason to get upset about it _right now_ when they were talking about local baseball in the sport news. “You didn’t talk to me for ten years,” Rust said, “and when you saw me again, you almost shot me.”  
  
“I didn’t almost shoot you,” Marty said. “Bloody hell, couldn’t you be just a little bit more dramatic? The gun was for self-defence.”  
  
“Yeah, because you just thought you might have to shoot me. For self-defence.”  
  
“I didn’t think that,” Marty said, “I just… I hadn’t seen you in ten years, Rust.”  
  
“Yeah. My point exactly.”  
  
“Your point?” Marty took a deep breath and then another. “You’ve lost your fucking point, man. If you want to leave, then leave. But I don’t want you to.”  
  
Rust turned to stare at him in the face. If they had been fifteen years longer, Marty supposed they might’ve got onto their feet, shove at each other a little. But now, the couch was very comfortable and also Marty had only recently stopped worrying every time Rust walked around the house without help. There was no way he was going to touch Rust except very gently.  
  
“You don’t want me to leave,” Rust said like it was an accusation. He probably thought he sounded threatening or something. Or like an old man who wouldn’t give a shit about anything. He wasn’t exactly wrong, but Marty considered himself quite good at seeing through Rust’s bullshit at this point. Hell, if there was one man in the whole country who could read Rust Cohle even a little, it was probably him. “What the fuck are you smiling about? Marty?”  
  
“Nothing, man,” he said. “You’re right there. I don’t want you to leave.”  
  
“ _Why?_ ”  
  
He rubbed his forehead. It wasn’t even ten o’clock in the morning. He was watching sports, for fuck’s sake. But yeah, he had kind of suspected that they’d have a conversation like this at some point. Everything had been going so smoothly ever since Marty had first got Rust to take a shower. Of course Rust had to ruin it eventually.  
  
“You can stay as long as you want,” he said, turning to look at Rust. Rust could’ve still been the best fucking detective in the state if he had wanted to. Surely he could detect that Marty wasn’t lying. “I like having you as a roommate. I’m a people person. You know that. I’ve got used to living alone but I don’t exactly _like_ it.”  
  
“Yeah,” Rust said slowly now, staring at Marty with narrowed eyes like it didn’t make sense what he was seeing on Marty’s face. “But why me? I’m bad at both in and outside parties. I haven’t lived with anyone for more than twenty years and I don’t know how to do it, and I’m a goddamn alcoholic.”  
  
“The party thing. You remembered.”  
  
“I remember most of the things you’ve said to me.” Rust swallowed. “Why the hell would you want me for a roommate?”  
  
“I like your company,” Marty said. “Tell me I’m lying.”  
  
Rust looked at him. His eyes were still the same, same then they had always been. “I don’t get it.”  
  
“Well, you aren’t supposed to get it, you asshole,” Marty said, sighed and gave him the remote control. He took it and blinked at it as if he wasn’t exactly sure what to do with it. “You’re supposed to say that you like _my_ company. That’s how it’s supposed to go.”  
  
“Yeah?”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
Rust nodded at the television. “You like baseball?”  
  
“Who doesn’t?” Marty asked. “Well, don’t answer that, I know you don’t.”  
  
“I like your company,” Rust said and put the remote control on the coffee table. “It just doesn’t make sense that I’d… that I’d stay here.”  
  
“Just stay for as long as you want to. There something on TV you’d rather be watching?”  
  
“This is fine,” Rust said. On the television, they were talking about basketball now. Rust looked tired in a very specific way, maybe like he had had an argument and lost it. Marty would’ve felt more smug if he had been sure what the argument had been about. “Marty –“  
  
“Rust?”  
  
“I’m wearing your clothes.”  
  
Marty nodded. “So you are. Those boxers too large or you?”  
  
“Fuck off,” Rust said. “I thought that maybe you’d drive me to my old place.”  
  
“Your old place –“  
  
“The room behind the bar. I’ve got clothes in there. And stuff. Some books.”  
  
“You read all my books already?”  
  
“Marty,” Rust said, “you have maybe ten books and it’s obvious that you’ve never read any of them.”  
  
“I started one,” Marty said. “I think.” He blinked. “Of course I’ll drive you there. Today?”  
  
“Yeah,” Rust said and cleared his throat. “So, basketball?”  
  
  
**  
  
  
Rust’s place behind the bar was worse than the house where Rust had lived years ago. In the old place, there had been too much space, like Rust just couldn’t bother fill it, didn’t care enough. But the flat where Rust took Marty that afternoon was too small and it was full of stuff – like this time, Rust hadn’t cared enough to notice that there was too much of him for this tiny place.  
  
Marty stood there on the threshold when Rust walked around, put things into plastic bags and then threw them at Marty. There were books and dishes and clothes and empty beer cans on the floor, and the couch that was covered with more books with titles that had words in them Marty had never heard of. There was a narrow bed and a chair and a drawer and the lamp hanging too low from the ceiling so that Rust almost hit his head on it twice.  
  
“This is different,” Marty said, “different than where you lived before.”  
  
“I wasn’t drinking then,” Rust said and filled another plastic bag with what seemed to be socks and boxers. “I think I’ve got everything.”  
  
“Should we clean up a little?”  
  
Rust looked around and shook his head. “No. I can come back for it. If it’s necessary.”  
  
“The scenery is nice,” Marty said. There was the river, and the kind of silence that crept under your skin.  
  
“Yeah,” Rust said, not looking at him. “Let’s go.”  
  
They stopped at the McDonald’s on the way back. Rust’s limping had got worse during the day and he didn’t say anything, when Marty settled next to him and draped his arm over his back. It wasn’t such a big deal anyway. Rust was just leaning into him a little. God knew he had leaned into Rust.  
  
“So,” Marty said, when they had their hamburgers and were eating them in the car, “is that how you like to live? Is that what your room is going to look like in a couple of days? Now that you’ve got all your stuff with you?”  
  
“All my stuff? I thought we were just trying to get me boxers, since yours are too large, you having the bigger dick and everything.”  
  
Marty smiled into his hamburger.  
  
“Fuck, you’re easy,” Rust said, glancing at him. “If only I had known back then that all I had to do was to mention your big dick and you’d drop any argument –“  
  
“Oh, you _knew_ ,” Marty said, still smiling, because _fuck,_ he was easy. “You just liked to argue.”  
  
“Can’t argue about that.” Rust glanced at him. “You worried that I’m going to make a mess in your house?”  
  
“No,” Marty said, but Rust was watching him so lying was pointless. “Yeah. A little.”  
  
“Don’t worry. It’s not going to happen.”  
  
Okay, so, it turned out that suddenly Marty _wanted_ Rust to make a mess in his house. “You can, though. You can make a pile of your socks on the coffee table if you want to.”  
  
“I don’t think that’s necessary, but thank you.”  
  
“And you can do to the guestroom whatever you like,” Marty said and cleared his throat. “It’s yours. It’s your room for now. Actually, maybe we could make a deal that you keep your books and boxers in your room and I keep mine in mine and the living room is no one’s land.”  
  
“It’s your house, Marty.”  
  
“Okay. It’s my house, so I can say that I want you to think that you live there, too.”  
  
Rust lit a cigarette. “You want me to live in your house –“  
  
“Aren’t you going to finish your hamburger?”  
  
“It’s cold.”  
  
“You should eat it,” Marty said and started the engine. “You’re looking too thin, man.”  
  
“Fuck you, man,” Rust said smiling around the cigarette. Then he finished his hamburger.  
  
  
**  
  
  
The next morning, Rust was already in the kitchen when Marty woke up.  
  
Marty rolled onto his back, still in the bed, and breathed in and out. His body ached like always in the morning. Probably it was his bones and joints reminding him about the fucking fifty-something years, and yeah, his chest ached where the bastard had got him with the axe. At least that was one good reason for feeling like a goddamn old man trying to figure out how to get out of the bed. But there were sounds coming from the kitchen, Rust was making coffee already, going through the cupboards, picking up dishes, and shit, it sounded like Rust was eating cereal straight from the box.  
  
Marty bit his lip and climbed out of the bed. Shit, hit hips. He put on a t-shirt but didn’t bother with sweatpants, and it was going to be a hot day anyway, he could tell. The air wasn’t moving at all. He glanced at the mirror, but he didn’t have drool on his chin or anything and there was nothing to be done about his hair, so he just walked to the kitchen.  
  
“Morning,” he said, took a chair and sat down beside the counter. “Don’t do that.”  
  
Rust was licking sugar from his fingertips. “What? Too much for you?”  
  
“I mean, put that damn cereal in the bowl first,” Marty said. “You don’t have to spare them. We have a dish machine.”  
  
“I was hungry,” Rust said but didn’t push his fucking hand into the box anymore.  
  
“You’re up early.”  
  
“I’m not good at sleeping. You know that.” He glanced at Marty, then poured coffee in two mugs and passed one over to him. “But usually I’ve been sitting in my room, waiting for you to wake up before I start wandering around.”  
  
“It was nice,” Marty said, “to wake up to the sounds of someone making coffee.”  
  
“Nice?”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“Never thought you’d be that easy to please,” Rust said and sat down. Marty put cereal in the bowl and then pushed the bowl to him across the counter. “Thanks. And well, it’s not like I’ve been feeling exactly perky, you know, walking around the house when you’re still sleeping didn’t seem like something I’d like to do.”  
  
“You feeling better now?”  
  
Rust nodded.  
  
“You look better, too,” Marty said without looking at him.  
  
“I thought I’d go for a walk today,” Rust said, and Marty almost poured milk onto the table. “Don’t look so shocked. Just around the block.”  
  
“Alright. I’ll come with you.”  
  
Rust was looking at his cup of coffee. “You’re that lonely?”  
  
“Yeah. Damn right I’m that lonely.”  
  
“Just don’t hold my hand out there. I don’t want your neighbors to think I’m a weak old man.”  
  
“Fuck the neighbors,” Marty said and stood up. “I’m hungry. I’m going to fry some eggs.”  
  
“We eat fried eggs all the time,” Rust said, glancing at him. “Can’t you make anything else?”  
  
“No,” Marty said and tried to find the frying pan from the sink, but it turned out Rust had washed it.  
  
  
**  
  
  
The walk went alright. At the halfway, Rust grabbed Marty’s shoulder and they stopped for a minute. Maybe it was that Rust was getting better or maybe it was that he was wearing his old clothes again, his own clothes and not Marty’s, but it was a bit easier to forget about the last ten years for a second. Or maybe it was that Rust wasn’t drinking at the moment. Marty didn’t know what that was about, because he hadn’t said anything about it, hadn’t told Rust not to, and instead he had asked Rust plenty of times if he wanted something from the supermarket. Rust never asked for beer. Never asked for anything, actually.  
  
“Alright,” Rust said now, let go of Marty’s shoulder and patted him on the back. “I’m good. We can go on.”  
  
They walked back to the house so slowly they were barely moving, but he didn’t mind. It would be too goddamn hot to be outside in a couple of hours but not yet, and there was just a tiny breeze of wind, and he was pretty sure Rust was doing his best not to look like he was happy about something so human than taking a nice walk in nice summer morning. At the house, Rust grabbed Marty’s shoulder again and he helped Rust to the couch, then kept his hand on Rust’s shoulder for a few seconds longer than was necessary.  
  
“I’m alright, Marty,” Rust said, “don’t worry. Just haven’t got that much exercise in a while.”  
  
“Yeah, I know. I know you’re alright.” He stepped away from Rust and went to the bathroom, took a piss, washed his hands, washed his face, too. Thank god for the air conditioning. When he went back to the living room, Rust was sitting on the couch, staring at the black television screen. “You aren’t drinking,” he said.  
  
Rust glanced at him, then sighed. “You want to talk about that? Now?”  
  
“Well, there’s never a right time to talk about anything with you,” Marty said and sat down next to him on the couch. “You always make it sound like I should just mind my own damn business.”  
  
Rust was quiet for a few seconds. Marty bit his lip, trying to figure out what to say next. He didn’t mind that Rust wasn’t drinking, of course not, that’d been just fucking awful of him. But it seemed like he should know if it was something Rust had decided. If Rust wanted to stay off the booze for good, of course Marty would fucking help him, _of course_ , but he needed to know. They were living together now.  
  
He opened his mouth, and that was when Rust touched his forearm.  
  
He blinked. Rust was shaking his head at the television but his palm was resting right above Marty’s wrist.  
  
“Rust –“  
  
“Sorry, man,” Rust said and pulled his hand away. Marty wanted to grab it and put it back. “I’ve been trying not to. And there’s not beer in the house.”  
  
“No. But there’s –“  
  
“On the upper shelf. I know.”  
  
“You haven’t –“  
  
“I’m not going to sneak to the kitchen at night to drink your whiskey,” Rust said. He sounded tired. “Probably. I don’t know. I hope not.”  
  
“I could hide it.”  
  
Rust didn’t say anything to that, which probably was a _yes._  
  
“So, we aren’t going to buy beer to the house.”  
  
“I thought…” Rust frowned. “I didn’t drink much when I was working with you. Back then. I had to keep my mind clear. For the job. And for you. I could probably do it again.”  
  
“Alright,” Marty said and shifted a little closer to him on the couch.  
  
“I kind of went through the withdrawal when I was in the coma. Seems like a pity to waste that and start drinking again.”  
  
“Listen,” Marty said and placed his hand on Rust’s knee. Rust had touched his forearm a moment ago, so it probably was something they could do now. And it was nice, just brushing his thumb against the fabric of Rust’s trousers. He couldn’t remember when he had touched someone like this, without expectations. “I’ve got a few calls. The usual stuff. Husbands thinking their wife is cheating on them, wives thinking their husband is cheating on them. It’s very dull, I know, but I think I need to start working again, to pay the bills. And I could use your brain.”  
  
“You need me sober,” Rust said in a blank voice, “to figure out who is cheating who.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“Bloody hell,” Rust said. He wasn’t even looking at Marty’s hand on his knee, like it was perfectly usual, nothing to make a fuss about. “I guess I’ve got to stay sober, then.”  
  
“I’d really appreciate that. For my business.”  
  
“You expect me to work for free?”  
  
“Well, you aren’t paying rent.”  
  
Rust blinked.  
  
“We’ll figure that out later,” Marty said, squeezed Rust’s knee and then pulled his hand away. “For now, you’re just keeping me company.” He stood up from the couch. “I’m hungry.”  
  
“You could just get yourself a girlfriend, you know,” Rust said, looking a little too serious about it.  
  
“Not the same thing, man,” Marty said. “Want fried eggs?”  
  
  
**  
  
  
He thought about it later – what he had said, and what Rust had said, and what he said to that. It wasn’t the same thing at all, obviously. And it had been years since he had even had a girlfriend who might’ve stayed not only for the night but for the next day as well. It seemed that the longer he lived alone, the more difficult it was to imagine someone sticking around. He was lonely, alright, it just wasn’t something that he could easily fix.  
  
But Rust was different. Rust already knew him at his worst. And he knew Rust. Rust had done the worst fucking thing to him years ago and that didn’t even seem to count anymore. What counted instead was that he and Rust, they had both been assholes as often as they could, about everything, and still he would’ve trusted Rust with his life. Had, too.  
  
And now Rust was staying with him, taking impossibly long showers in his bathroom and smelling of Marty’s soap afterwards. He felt like they were both full of sharp edges, but it didn’t matter, because they had been cutting themselves on those edges for two goddamn decades or something.  
  
“I’ve been trying online dating,” he told Rust that evening. Rust was reading one of his books on the couch and Marty was sitting next to him with the laptop balanced on his knees.  
  
Rust glanced at him and turned a page. “Yeah, you told me that.”  
  
“I know,” he said. “So, I’ve been trying online dating. Haven’t had much success on hitting on anyone in the bar lately.”  
  
Rust snorted.  
  
“I was very good at it before,” Marty said. “When I shouldn’t have been.”  
  
“You only thought you were good at it,” Rust said, “because you weren’t supposed to be doing it at the first place, so the few times you actually went through with it, the guilt made it much bigger of a deal than it was.”  
  
Marty opened his mouth and then closed it again. “What? Are you trying to say that I wasn’t handsome back then?”  
  
Rust shook his head. “No.”  
  
“No? You aren’t trying to say that?”  
  
“No.” Rust glanced at him. “Wouldn’t help a bit. You’ve already made up your mind about it.”  
  
“I always knew you were the handsome one,” Marty said, keeping his eyes on the laptop. He had a feeling that Rust was still staring at him, felt like a fucking itch under his skin. “Anyway, back to online dating. It’s not been great, you know. The more time goes, the more I think that I’m never getting married again.”  
  
There was something heavy about the silence.  
  
“I don’t mean that I wouldn’t want to,” he said, “it’s just that it’s difficult to imagine that I’d find someone who could deal with my bullshit.”  
  
Rust snorted at that, but it sounded calculated.  
  
“So what I’m trying to say here,” Marty said, even though he didn’t have a fucking clue what he was trying to say, “is that you aren’t a goddamn replacement until the right woman comes along.”  
  
Rust swallowed. “Marty –“  
  
“I can go on dates,” Marty said, “and I don’t know, get a room in the motel if it comes to that. I doubt there’s going to be anything more serious. So you don’t have to think about it.”  
  
“Marty –“  
  
“No need to worry that you’ll run into some woman in here,” Marty said.  
  
“I wasn’t exactly worried about that,” Rust said, rubbing the side of his nose.  
  
“You ever tried online dating?”  
  
Rust breathed out. “You think I’d get lucky?”  
  
“So, you haven’t tried it.”  
  
“Fuck, no, Marty, I haven’t tried it.”  
  
“We could put an old picture of you there,” Marty said, “a fifteen years old picture, and then you could write a nice profile text, maybe leave the voids and the extinction of the human race out of it but put some poetry there instead. We’d be busy trying to keep the women out.”  
  
“Fifteen years?” Rust said, blinking. “You sure as hell talk a lot about how pretty you thought I was then.”  
  
“No, I don’t.”  
  
Rust grinned. Marty shoved him at the chest but very carefully, because there was absolutely no fucking way he was going to hurt Rust.  
  
“And it’s not like this is news to you,” he said. “You had a mirror. And eyes.”  
  
“Well, I certainly didn’t know you appreciated my looks so much. I thought you were more into, I don’t know, a nice pair of tits.”  
  
Marty smiled and then shook his head. A nice pair of tits, yeah, nothing wrong with that. Then he thought about something else. “I know we aren’t talking about it, but when you and Maggie…” He bit his lip. “It kind of made sense somehow. I mean, I had never thought she’d do it, and I hadn’t thought you would, but otherwise, it made sense, because you were… Well, with you looking like you did, and you being always honest, she appreciated that. _I_ didn’t know how to. But you, no one could you stop you from being honest about yourself.”  
  
Rust was watching him carefully now.  
  
“Anyway, we aren’t talking about that,” Marty said and frowned at the laptop. “Do you mind if I tell you about the case now? Andrew Wilson, the cheating thing? Or are you tired? Because I think there’s a game on the television, we could just –“  
  
“Marty,” Rust cut in, “you know it was about you, don’t you? For the both of us?”  
  
“Yeah,” Marty said and cleared his throat. “So, Andrew Wilson, I told you about this already, he called me a few days ago and told me he thinks her wife…” And then he told the details to Rust, and Rust looked appropriately bored and asked a few clever questions and then thought he had figured the whole thing out, and Marty had to point out that they’d have to actually investigate it a little. He couldn’t just have Rust calling the client to tell the poor fucker what he was doing wrong in his life. Their business was private investigating, not a fucking call-line for Rust’s philosophical insights. He didn’t know who the hell would pay for that.  
  
But he couldn’t stop Rust from talking now that the man had got started. He stopped listening at some point, though, and Rust definitely realized that but didn’t seem to mind. Marty switched the television on but kept the volume down, and Rust talked to him and he stared at the screen and wondered what the hell Rust had meant by it. It had been about Marty, yeah, alright, he understood that it had been about him for Maggie who had wanted a divorce and had been too tired with him to fight it. But how the hell had it been about Marty for Rust?  
  
  
**  
  
  
3.  
  
  
Marty was still half-asleep when there was a knock on his bedroom door. At first he didn’t realize who it could be. He was still in a dream where a girl was sitting on him, and the girl looked a little like Maggie and a little like young Meryl Streep, and it was quite obviously a dream but a nice one and he didn’t want to wake up. Then he realized it was Rust, it had to be Rust who was knocking on his door, and that had never happened before. These days, Rust was always in the kitchen when Marty woke up. Usually Rust loaded the coffee machine and then did something unthinkable, like ate cereal from the box or cocoa powder with a spoon or drank milk with nothing else.  
  
The whiskey was under Marty’s bed now, so neither of them had to think about that. Rust never came to his bedroom, only now it appeared that Rust was knocking on his door.  
  
“Just come in,” he called. He couldn’t think of any reason for Rust to wake him up. Maybe the house was on fire. He tugged at his boxers to make sure he was decent, and then Rust opened the door.  
  
“Busy?” Rust asked.  
  
Marty sat up on the mattress. “What’s wrong? You alright?”  
  
“Yeah,” Rust said, looking around the room. He wasn’t even trying to hide it, the bastard. Marty bit back a smile. “Hope I didn’t interrupt anything.”  
  
“Don’t worry about it, asshole. So, what is it?”  
  
“It’s eight.”  
  
Marty glanced at the clock on the wall. “Yeah?”  
  
Rust blinked at him. “I thought… I couldn’t sleep much, so I’ve been waiting for you to wake up for hours.”  
  
Marty opened his mouth and then closed it again.  
  
“I thought you might help me with something,” Rust said and took a step back. “But since you’re still sleeping –“  
  
“I’m awake now,” Marty said and got out of the bed. His dick was still half-hard in his boxers but that was Rust’s fucking problem now. He put on a t-shirt and pants and ignored the way Rust was still inspecting his bedroom. “What do you need help with?”  
  
“I’m going to cut my hair,” Rust said.  
  
  
**  
  
  
“Are you sure?” Marty asked. He was standing behind Rust’s back, one hand resting against Rust’s shoulder, and he could feel the man taking deep breaths.  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“Really?”  
  
“Yeah. Marty, just fucking –“  
  
“Because if you –“  
  
“Just cut my fucking hair already,” Rust said, “or I’ll do it myself.”  
  
“Easy, now. I’m going to do it. I was just asking –“  
  
“It’s just hair, Marty,” Rust said and shifted in his chair.  
  
“Alright,” Marty said and then cut the ponytail off.  
  
Half an hour later, Rust looked like some idiot had tried to cut his hair short. Marty had done his best, and then Rust had taken the scissors and made the situation considerably worse. They had shaved off Rust’s mustache as well, even though Marty didn’t know why.  
  
“Well, there goes my chance at online dating,” Rust said, staring at the mirror.  
  
“It’s not that bad,” Marty said. It definitely was that bad. “We’re going to take you to the barber.”  
  
“I hate those assholes,” Rust said. “They always try to talk to me, and when I finally talk back to shut them up, they aren’t happy about that either.”  
  
Marty tried not to smile. “You don’t have to worry about that this time, because I’m coming with you.”  
  
“You want to check that the barber won’t make it worse?”  
  
“I’m going to do the small talk, idiot,” Marty said and patted him on the shoulder.  
  
Rust narrowed his eyes. “You’re going to flirt with the barber. Fucking hell, Marty, don’t make me sit and look at you flirting with some goddamn woman who’s got scissors at my face.”  
  
“I’m not going to flirt,” Marty said and made a mental note not to flirt too much. Lucy, his barber, was in her late thirties and a very attractive woman who also knew a lot about fishing. “Do you mind if we go right away? I’ll call her and see if she’s free.”  
  
“Maybe we should just shave it all off. That’d work.”  
  
“Definitely not,” Marty said. Rust looked at him with an odd look in his eyes as he walked out of the bathroom and started looking for his phone.  
  
  
**  
  
  
“So, you two are old colleagues,” Lucy said.  
  
“Yeah,” Marty said, watching as she slowly undid the damage Marty and Rust had done to Rust’s hair. He was happy he had come along and not only because he didn’t want to think about what Lucy and Rust would have been talking about without him. It was nice, watching the expressions shift on Rust’s face when Lucy went through his hair. The poor bastard looked like he was waiting for a guillotine but tried to be brave about it.  
  
The nice thing was that what Lucy was doing with Rust’s hair made Marty to think about Rust he had known ten years ago. Rust’s face was still a bit grey, but the shorter hair made him look like the man who had been the best fucking detective in the state. God, Marty had been jealous of him, and annoyed by him, and fucking amazed, and probably all the emotions that existed.  
  
He cleared his throat. Well, almost all.  
  
“From the days when you were a cop?” Lucy asked.  
  
Rust was looking at Marty as if asking why the hell this weird woman had her hands in his hair.  
  
“Yeah,” Marty said, “we were partners. Rust here was the best detective there was. Could make anyone pour out all their secrets.”  
  
Lucy laughed. “You should be worried, then.”  
  
“I am,” Marty said, “oh, god, I am worried. But I think he’s figured out pretty much everything about me already.”  
  
“That’s nice,” Lucy said. “So, two of you are living together now?”  
  
“Yeah,” Marty said. Now Rust was staring at him with a pointed look on his face, like he was trying to warn Marty about something. Marty ignored that. “Yeah, the thing in the newspapers, I’m sure you read about it. We were both a bit of a mess afterwards, so he moved in.”  
  
“It was terrible,” Lucy said, “yeah, I read about it. Terrible what people are capable of. But I’m glad something good came out of it.”  
  
“Yeah,” Marty said.  
  
Rust was chewing on his lower lip, staring at Marty like he knew something Marty didn’t. It was fucking annoying. He almost asked Rust what it was, but then Lucy sighed.  
  
“I’m happy for you,” Lucy said, “it’s not common, you know, to find love in your old age.”  
  
“What?” Marty said and looked at Rust, but Rust looked like he had known where this was going all along. Marty would punch the bastard in the face at home. Well, of course he wouldn’t _punch_ Rust, but he could maybe slap Rust on the cheek, very carefully, maybe with his fingertips.  
  
He blinked.  
  
“I’m not old,” he told Lucy, trying to keep his voice light. “And we aren’t…” But he couldn’t make himself say it. What would he have said, anyway? _In love?_  
  
“Don’t worry, I won’t talk about it to anyone,” Lucy said. “People around here, they’ve really got to stop being so goddamn old-fashioned about things like that. It’s just love, you know. Shouldn’t matter either way, right?”  
  
“No,” Marty said slowly, “no, it shouldn’t.” Rust was looking at him, but he couldn’t read Rust’s face now, not at all.  
  
“Well, we’re done here,” Lucy said and ran her fingers through Rust’s hair. “Anything you need me to fix?”  
  
Rust glanced at himself in the mirror. “No, it’s good.”  
  
“It’s perfect,” Marty said. Rust’s hair looked like it had before, only a bit thinner and greyer. But Marty didn’t mind that, not at all. “Thank you, Lucy.”  
  
“Don’t let your boyfriend cut your hair anymore,” she said to Rust. “I know he’s a charming man, but he didn’t do very good job about it.”  
  
“I won’t,” Rust said and stood up from the chair. Marty rushed to help him, but Rust patted him on the shoulder and then pushed him away, so he took a step back. Sometimes it was difficult to remember that Rust was so much better already and didn’t need to lean into him all the time.  
  
They argued about who would pay the bill, and Lucy glanced between them with a smile that Marty preferred not to think too closely about. Finally he let Rust pay for the haircut and then drove them to the supermarket, even though Rust’s threats were pretty imaginative. He told Rust the man could wait in the car if he hated the supermarket so much, and Rust said Marty was being childish and followed him to the store.  
  
A little later, Marty wondered if this was why Rust hadn’t wanted to come to the supermarket. They walked past the beer aisle, and Rust just froze for a second, then flinched when Marty pressed a hand on his back.  
  
“Ketchup,” Marty said, “we need ketchup. Quickly. Come on.”  
  
They bought ketchup but not beer, and more cereal because apparently Rust was addicted to that stuff now that he didn’t drink, and so many packets of cigarettes they should’ve lasted for a year but would probably last for a week. When they were finally back in the car, driving home, Marty kept his eyes on the road and wondered if it was better to say something about it or ignore it, or maybe say something about it later, which seemed like a coward’s choice but he chose it anyway. He took Rust home, made them coffee, watched Rust eating a bowl of cereal with milk, did some work at his laptop, made them more coffee, and then tried to watch a baseball game, and then he couldn’t take it anymore.  
  
“You knew where she was going with it,” he said.  
  
Rust put away the book he had been reading and turned to Marty. “It was bloody obvious.”  
  
“No, it wasn’t.”  
  
“Yeah, it was. From the moment you walked me in and told her what you wanted her to do with my hair.”  
  
Marty opened his mouth and then closed it. “But you didn’t stop me. Why didn’t you say something?”  
  
“Because I hate talking to people, and you were there to do the talking. That was the only reason you were there, Marty.”  
  
“And to give you a drive.”  
  
“You wouldn’t let me drive your car? Really?”  
  
Marty thought about it. They hadn’t picked Rust’s car yet. They should do it soon, even though he didn’t realize where Rust would want to go without him.  
  
“Anyway, I didn’t know you were going to be talking about how we’ve known each other for years and how we’ve been partners and how I moved in with you.”  
  
“But I said nothing to suggest…” He paused and took a deep breath. “Sorry.”  
  
“I don’t care,” Rust said and lit a cigarette. “Doesn’t make much difference.”  
  
Marty nodded and turned to look at the television. It didn’t make much difference. It didn’t… “What do you mean, it doesn’t make much difference? Of course it makes a difference. Now she thinks that you’re my _boyfriend_ or something.”  
  
Rust glanced at him. “Were you planning to hit on her?”  
  
“What? Of course not.”  
  
“She’s not going to talk about it to anyone,” Rust said, “she realizes that people around here are fucking idiots about things like that. And she doesn’t mind. She wasn’t lying when she said that. So, I don’t see what difference it makes that your barber thinks we’re fucking.”  
  
“But we aren’t.”  
  
“Thanks, I hadn’t noticed.”  
  
“Fuck you,” Marty said and then blinked. _Shit_. Maybe he shouldn’t have said that. But Rust just looked amused. He was almost smiling around the cigarette. “Fuck you, Rust,” Marty said again, just to see what would happen. Rust snorted. Well, that was good. “So, you don’t mind? That she thought that.”  
  
“No, Marty, I don’t fucking mind.”  
  
“Then I shouldn’t either.”  
  
“You can mind whatever fuck you want.”  
  
“I like your hair, by the way,” Marty said, raised his hand and pushed the strands of hair back from Rust’s face.  
  
“That,” Rust said in a perfectly steady voice, “is exactly the kind of a thing that’s going to make people think you’re fucking me.”  
  
Marty pulled his hand away.  
  
“You can touch my hair as much as you like,” Rust said, not looking at him, “just don’t be shocked when people put two and two together.”  
  
“But we aren’t –“  
  
“I’m hungry,” Rust said and stood up.  
  
Marty looked at him, when he walked to the kitchen. He looked taller now, with the new hair, or maybe that was because he could walk short distances without limping or leaning onto anything now. “That’s because you only eat cereal. That’s why you’re hungry.”  
  
“I can’t cook,” Rust said and took a box of cereal.  
  
  
**  
  
  
Marty woke up in the middle of the night and couldn’t get back to the sleep. He could hear the birds through the window. It was probably hours until the sunrise and even now, they wouldn’t shut up. And it was too hot in here, but when he pushed the blanket away, it was too cold. And the house was all quiet, so Rust was probably sleeping for fucking once, which was good, because Rust needed sleep. He was getting better, though. And the new haircut -  
  
Marty bit his lip and sat up on the bed. Fucking hell. He knew it was goddamn stupid, but he still felt like he wanted to call Lucy and ask her how the hell she’d reached the conclusion that he and Rust would be… that they’d be dating or something. It was plain as day that they were just friends. Well, they were really close, but friends could be close, right? And they were living together, but that didn’t mean anything, either. And sometimes Marty had a weird feeling that he’d punch anyone who’d try to hurt Rust in any way. And he really liked the new hair. But none of these things meant anything. Lucy had probably been reading wrong kind of romance novels. Or maybe she’d been high. Or joking. Shit, he’d get a headache if he kept on thinking about this.  
  
He waited for a moment, but he couldn’t stop thinking about it and he couldn’t fall asleep, so he got out of the bed and sneaked to the bathroom as quietly as he could. He didn’t want to wake Rust up. But when he was going back to his bedroom, he realized that there was a faint light coming from the living room, like he had forgotten the television on again.  
  
He stopped at the doorway. The television was on, there was a baseball game going on, and Rust was sitting on the couch, staring at the screen.  
  
“What the hell?” Marty asked. “You don’t like baseball.”  
  
“I’m not watching it,” Rust said, watching it. He didn’t turn to look at Marty and didn’t seem surprised at all that Marty was here. Well, he had definitely heard Marty sneaking to the bathroom a moment ago. “I couldn’t sleep.”  
  
Marty hovered at the doorway for a few seconds, but well, he couldn’t sleep either, because he couldn’t stop thinking about how anyone would think that they’d be a couple. He swallowed and walked to the couch, sat down beside Rust, took the remote control from Rust’s hand but did nothing with it.  
  
“I thought,” he said, “that when you can’t sleep, you’d be in your room reading very grim books about, I don’t know, death and stuff. But turns out you’re just watching sports. Which team are we hoping wins this?”  
  
“I don’t -,” Rust said and paused. Marty bit back his smile. Surely it was a bad sign that it had taken three seconds for Rust to realize Marty was joking. “It’s like, I don’t know, background noise. Reminds me of things.”  
  
“Things?”  
  
Rust shrugged. “That I’m here.”  
  
“You’re very weird,” Marty said, took a deep breath and leaned against the back of the couch. Rust smelled of cigarettes. “I was thinking about Lucy. About how she thought we were…”  
  
Rust didn’t say anything, only stared at the baseball players.  
  
“I’m just surprised that she’d thought that.”  
  
“What do you want me to say here?” Rust asked, rubbing the side of his nose.  
  
“I don’t know. What you think.”  
  
“I think,” Rust said, “that since you think the whole thing is so unimaginable, you should just shut up about it and let it go.”  
  
“ _I_ think it’s unimaginable?”  
  
“Don’t you?” Rust said. He sounded tired.  
  
“Yeah,” Marty said quickly, “of course, it’s just… We’ve been through a lot, Rust. We’re pretty close.”  
  
“True.”  
  
“I don’t want you to move out.”  
  
Rust was quiet for a moment after that. “You sure? Because I know I eat all your cereal.”  
  
“Yeah, it’s a burden. But I’m sure.”  
  
“Do you…” Rust frowned. “Should I give up the place I’m renting? Behind the bar.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“Just like that.”  
  
“Yeah.” Marty took a deep breath. “But I was thinking… this thing Lucy thought about us. It doesn’t make sense to you, does it?”  
  
“Bloody hell –“  
  
“Because I don’t think we are…” Marty swallowed. “We’re just friends, right?”  
  
Rust turned to look at him with a careful look in his eyes, like he was trying to read Marty like other people. “Well, what do you think? You want to kiss me or something?”  
  
Marty blinked.  
  
“No, you don’t,” Rust said, raised his hand and patted Marty on the arm. “You don’t want to kiss me.”  
  
Marty stared at Rust’s hand. Rust pulled his hand away, took the packet of cigarettes from his pocket and lit one. He did it without looking, like he had done it a hundred times and could do it with his eyes tied. But then again, he had always had clever fingers. Maybe it was all that drawing he had been doing, back in the day.  
  
“Marty?”  
  
Marty shook his head and then remember what they had been talking about. “Yeah. Of course not. And it’s not like you’d like to kiss me, either.”  
  
“I think,” Rust said, the cigarette hanging from his mouth, “kissing’s overrated. It’s a display of intimacy, and in our society, we put so much meaning into it that the act, the actual act of kissing is always a disappointment of a sort.”  
  
Marty tried to think about that. “You think kissing is a disappointment.”  
  
“Usually, yeah.”  
  
“Alright,” Marty said. He thought about pointing out that _he_ liked kissing and that Rust was just being an asshole, but it was the middle of the night and he was kind of relieved they weren’t talking about their relationship anymore. “Why can’t you sleep?”  
  
“I don’t know,” Rust said. He didn’t seem to mind that Marty had changed the subject. “I’m bad at it. You know that.”  
  
“So, nothing specific this time?”  
  
Rust shook his head.  
  
“Want to be alone?”  
  
“I don’t mind.”  
  
“You don’t mind that I’m here?”  
  
“No,” Rust said and glanced at him. “I’ve spent enough time alone.”  
  
“Yeah, me too,” Marty said. “Want to watch a movie?”  
  
He could see Rust biting his lip. “Fuck no.”  
  
“Great,” he said. “I’ll pick something. Have you seen The Terminator?”  
  
“Absolutely not.”  
  
“It’s a classic,” Marty said, “and I don’t have a goddamn clue what kind of movies you might like, but we’re going to start with that. If you hate it, you can just keep staring straight through the television like you were doing with the game.”  
  
“I suppose I could just watch you,” Rust said, “watching the movie. I bet I could tell what’s happening in it by the look on your face. You can’t hide what you think, Marty.”  
  
“I can. You’re just very good at reading people. And you’ve been reading me for a long time.”  
  
“It’s too bad _you_ don’t even know what you think sometimes.”  
  
“Well, life can’t be too dull,” he said and glanced at Rust. “You really going to let me show you The Terminator?”  
  
“Yeah,” Rust said.  
  
Marty lasted for maybe half an hour before he fell asleep. When he woke up again, the grey light of early morning had filled the room. He was still on the couch, half-sitting and half-lying, his head in Rust’s lap, Rust’s right hand rested on his shoulder. Rust was snoring quietly.  
  
Marty decided that he didn’t have to go to the bathroom and closed his eyes again.  
  
  
**  
  
  
4.  
  
  
He didn’t want to kiss Rust. Not exactly. It was just that he liked people, he liked touching people, he liked kissing and he liked sex. It was just what he was like.  
  
A few days after the barber incident, he took his laptop and spent some time on the online dating site he had been using recently, but he just couldn’t imagine talking to any of these women, let alone go on a date with one. Maybe that was because Rust was sitting next to him on the couch, his heels on the coffee table, the goddamn ledger in his lap. It was like someone had grabbed the Rust Marty remembered from the past and the Rust who was living with Marty now and mixed them together, and this new Rust made Marty coffee every morning and only sighed when Marty complimented his clothes and ate all Marty’s cereal and hid the remote control when he didn’t want to watch sports on the television.  
  
But still there were pieces of the old one in him. Right now, Rust was supposedly checking the background of one of their new clients, but what it looked like was that he was drawing a graph.  
  
“Stop staring,” Rust said without looking at him. “Or do you have a thing for hands suddenly?”  
  
“You’ve always had nice hands,” Marty said but turned his gaze back to his laptop. These women on the internet, they all seemed nice and everything, but it was just a bit difficult to imagine an actual human being behind the profile picture. It hadn’t been so difficult before, but then again, he hadn’t had Rust sitting next to him then, alive and breathing and warm to touch.  
  
Not that Marty touched him much, because he didn’t. It wasn’t like that. But they were living together, so sometimes that happened.  
  
He patted Rust on the knee and clicked the profile of a woman who had a sharp look in her eyes. A bit like Rust, perhaps. Maybe Marty could bring her over after a date and she and Rust could stare each other to the grave.  
  
“What’re you laughing at?” Rust asked.  
  
“Nothing.”  
  
“Stop it. I’m trying to work here.”  
  
“It’s Saturday evening. You could just take a break and do something fun.”  
  
“Like what?” Rust asked and turned to look at him. “Are you planning to trade me for someone who can cook?”  
  
“I thought,” he said, “maybe someone who likes kissing.” Then he glanced at Rust. “Don’t worry. You’re officially living here now.”  
  
“That’s exactly what I’m worried about,” Rust said. “I just gave up my old place and brought all my shit here. If you decide to start playing a family with someone, I’m going to end up in a ditch.”  
  
There was something sharp in Rust’s tone that Marty couldn’t quite grasp, so he chose to ignore it. “You could just stay here.”  
  
“And listen to you shagging the poor lady through the walls? No, thank you.”  
  
“I didn’t think you’d be listening. Didn’t think you’d be into stuff like that.”  
  
“I have ears, Marty,” Rust said. “And you didn’t think I’d be into what kind of stuff, exactly?”  
  
Marty frowned at the profile picture of a woman who seemed very lovely and oddly uninteresting. He hadn’t meant anything by it, but he wasn’t going to back off now. “Well, I meant sex.”  
  
Rust stared at him, he knew that without checking. “You think I don’t like sex?”  
  
“I think,” he said, putting the laptop away. It was pretty obvious that the only person he was going to have dinner dates with any time soon was Rust. “I _think_ that if I asked you what you think about sex, you’d say something like _sex is a social construction._ ”  
  
“ _Sex is a social construction_ ,” Rust said slowly, imitating Marty’s imitation of him. “What’ve you been reading?”  
  
“Nothing,” Marty said.  
  
“I don’t think sex is a social construction,” Rust said. “At least, it’s not only that.”  
  
“Yeah, but you never have sex,” Marty said and then bit his lip. Rust was looking at him like he was trying to decide whether Marty being an idiot was just annoying or also amusing. Marty took a deep breath. “I mean, I didn’t mean that you never… obviously you’ve had sex.”  
  
“Obviously”, Rust said, putting the ledger on the coffee table and leaning slightly towards Marty. It was nice. He had taken a shower earlier and he smelled of Marty’s soap.  
  
“But it’s not like you need it.”  
  
“Nobody _needs_ sex, Marty,” Rust said. He had a serious look on his face. It felt like a trap. “At least, nobody needs sex with another person, unless you count reproduction as a _need_ , and I don’t. We don’t need sex. We just like it. And calling something a need makes it easier for you to tell yourself why you’re making bad choices to get it.”  
  
“Are you talking about me?”  
  
“Of course I’m talking about you. You used to let your dick do all the thinking for you.”  
  
Marty thought about arguing, but he had a feeling that would be a very embarrassing conversation at his part. “Yeah, alright. But I’m not like that anymore. I’m just trying to… trying to find a nice woman and go on a date and to a hotel afterwards and then come back to you. I don’t think that’s illegal.”  
  
“It’s not illegal. That’s what you’re looking for?”  
  
“I told you. I’m not going to bring anyone here.”  
  
“I don’t want to be in the house if you fuck someone here,” Rust said, looking him in the eyes. “I just don’t.”  
  
“I know,” he said, even though he wanted to ask why. Rust looked like he was serious about it, like Marty sleeping with someone under their roof would be unbearable. “I won’t. I promise.”  
  
“I don’t want you to promise me things,” Rust said, looking unhappy.  
  
“Okay, I won’t promise it then.”  
  
“But I don’t want you to bring anyone over.”  
  
“For fuck’s sake –“ Marty put the laptop on the coffee table, then took Rust’s ledger from his hands and put it there on the table as well, and grabbed Rust’s hand. Just to make a point. “I’m not going to bring anyone over. I don’t even know how that’d happened. It’s a bit difficult to think about meeting a nice woman when you’re here all the time.”  
  
Something shifted in Rust’s eyes.  
  
“And just so that we’re clear about this,” Marty said, “I want you here. So don’t you fucking tell me that you’re sorry you’re disturbing my existence or some other bullshit. I want you here. I just like to touch people. It’s nice sometimes. And I can’t even remember when was the last time I had sex. Before you came back to my life, certainly.”  
  
“I messed up your sex life,” Rust said. He didn’t sound sorry.  
  
“It’s just that some people like touching,” Marty said, rubbing Rust’s fingers. Rust didn’t seem to mind.  
  
“Alright.”  
  
“Yeah?”  
  
“Yeah,” Rust said. He sounded almost bored now, but he was watching Marty carefully. “I get it. No need to tell me more about this touching. Can I have my hand back now?”  
  
“What?” Marty blinked. “Oh, yeah. Sorry.” He let go of Rust’s hand, but Rust didn’t pull it away, only took Marty’s hand instead and squeezed it lightly.  
  
“It’s just,” Rust said, “I was making a graph of all the connections your client’s had in past five years. I thought I could get back to it.”  
  
“Yeah,” Marty said. Rust was kind of holding his hand now. It was nice. “Of course.”  
  
“We can do something later. Maybe watch a movie.”  
  
“You’ve hated all the movies I’ve shown you.”  
  
“Yeah, well,” Rust said, let go of his hand and patted him on the knee before taking the ledger back in his hands, “it’s oddly fascinating, seeing you excited about something that’s clearly waste of time.”  
  
“So, you just like to look at my face.”  
  
“Yeah, that’s it exactly.”  
  
“I knew it,” Marty said and took his laptop again but didn’t go back to the dating site.  
  
  
**  
  
A few days later, Marty heard Rust jerking off in the shower.  
  
It was an accident. He wasn’t trying to listen to Rust or anything. He had thought about the subject once or twice: they were living together and he didn’t get out of the house much, not without Rust, so probably Rust did whatever he did when he was around. He surely did. But he mostly did it in his bedroom, late at night or in the morning before he got up from the bed, didn’t linger, caught the stuff in a napkin the best he could, then went to the bathroom to wash his hands, and if he saw Rust on the way, he acted casual as hell. All in all, he was being very subtle about it.  
  
He hadn’t been surprised that apparently Rust was subtle about it as well. But now, he was watching the morning news on the television and Rust was in the shower, they hadn’t even had coffee yet. Then the news reporter started talking about a young girl that had been killed last week, the police was looking for eyewitnesses, and they showed the picture of a girl and there was something in her smile that reminded him of Macie. He switched the damn thing off, and suddenly there was silence, and his heart that was beating a little too fast, and the slick sound of skin on skin, well, a hand on a dick, only it took him a few seconds to realize that. At least he forgot about the news pretty fast.  
  
He was going to switch the television back on, just change the channel, but it seemed pointless. He put the remote control on the coffee table and went to get a cup of coffee. Rust would be finished soon. With the shower, yeah, that was what he was thinking about. And then they would drink coffee and talk about what they were doing today. And Rust wasn’t groaning or anything, the only sound was his hand on his dick, faint because it had to come through the bathroom door and all the way to the kitchen. At least Marty’s hearing appeared fine.  
  
He and Rust had seen each other in their worst. Who the fuck cared if Marty knew what Rust was doing behind the locked door – or actually the door probably wasn’t locked. In the beginning, when Rust had moved in with all his fresh injuries, he had left the bathroom door unlocked because Marty had been worried he’d faint or something. Marty had done the same, because he didn’t want Rust to feel that the man was a patient or something. And the habit had stuck. They were alone in here, they knew if the bathroom was occupied. No need to lock the doors. Not even for jerking off.  
  
Marty cleared his throat and rubbed his palms against thighs. And yeah, if he was feeling like he might’ve wanted to jerk off himself just now, it was because he was thinking of it. Generally speaking, of course, because he wasn’t thinking about Rust specifically. Or yeah, he was thinking about Rust, but it was a coincidence. It was only because Rust was with him all the time and so he rarely thought about other people.  
  
He had a feeling that there was more touching now than before – subtle touches like Rust’s hand on his shoulder, or Rust’s fingers bushing against his when he passed the cup of coffee over to Marty. He didn’t think Rust was doing it on purpose. He didn’t understand _why_ Rust would’ve been doing it on purpose. Rust wasn’t the one who kind of wanted to touch the other person all the time but had to hold back a little, Marty was.  
  
Oh, fucking hell. He didn’t want to touch Rust _all the time._ Just occasionally. And it was mostly because Rust was around, and Marty’s brain got mixed signals somehow – Rust was at his home, Rust was the most important person in his life after his girls, he kind of shared everything with Rust now. He wanted to touch Rust. It wasn’t _personal,_ not really, even though everything about Rust had been kind of personal for seventeen years, and who the fuck knew why that was.  
  
Sometimes he realized he was hovering at Rust’s personal space just to get a reason to touch Rust, like, maybe brush his arm with his fingers or something equally casual. That what was he was thinking about, when Rust came from the bathroom and walked through the kitchen to the coffee machine.  
  
Marty blinked. He was going to act normal. Rust would never know that Marty had heard him rubbing it off.  
  
“What?” Rust asked, pouring coffee in a mug.  
  
“Nothing,” Marty said.  
  
Rust sighed. “Bloody hell,” he said, took his coffee and walked to the couch.  
  
  
**  
  
  
They went out for a dinner that night. There was a new restaurant that was supposed to have the best pizza in the town, so Marty told Rust that they were going, no arguments, and that Rust should put on one of his nicer shirts. When they were about to leave after the seven o’clock news, Rust went to his bedroom and then came out again five minutes later, wearing a white shirt and a tie. He had jeans, but still – damn.  
  
“You told me to wear something nice,” Rust said, glaring at Marty like Marty just had claimed everyone had a good heart.  
  
“Wait a second,” Marty said, “I’m going to change clothes.” Then he spent five minutes stressing about what the hell he should wear. It was just goddamn annoying that in a few weeks, Rust had transformed from a half-dead old man to being the handsome one again. It certainly helped that he was five years younger than Marty and still had all his hair, which was also unfair, if Marty started thinking about it, which he wasn’t going to do.  
  
For a few weeks, he had felt like they were pretty much even. Rust had still looked like a movie star but the movie star had had a rough ten years of alcoholism and other questionable lifestyle choices. But now Rust was once again the James Dean of Marty’s life.  
  
He didn’t change his clothes, after all. It wouldn’t help.  
  
“You’re being an idiot,” Rust told him, when he reappeared from his bedroom in the same clothes. “I don’t give a fuck about my clothes. I’m only doing this because you want me to. The hair, the shirt, everything.”  
  
“Yeah, I know,” he said. He was well aware that he was an idiot but sadly, there seemed to be nothing he could do about it. “I’m just worried someone will set their eyes on you and I’m going to end up coming home alone.”  
  
“And how the fuck that’d happen, exactly,” Rust said. It didn’t seem like he was waiting for an answer, which was great, because Marty wasn’t going to tell him. There was a good chance that Rust wouldn’t realize when someone was flirting at him, and that’d definitely be for Marty’s benefit.  
  
He drove them to the restaurant. It was just how they did things: he drove, and Rust sat in the passenger seat and complained about the songs on the radio or the state of the universe. It reminded him of how things had been a long time ago. Sometimes he found himself wondering if there was something he could have done differently, which was just stupid, because it was obvious he could have done a hundred things definitely.  
  
But Rust didn’t seem to think so. Rust seemed to think that whatever had happened, had happened, and there was no changing it and no reason to dwell on it, either. Maybe that was because he had had his fair share of tragedy to dwell on.  
  
Tonight, Marty didn’t think about the list of things he shouldn’t have done, which involved cheating Maggie and taking her for granted and not realizing he would miss his kids more than anything when they wouldn’t be living with him anymore, and also, punching Rust in the face. Or at least he should’ve called Rust later. Maybe after a few years. He should’ve found Rust and then perhaps the past ten years wouldn’t have gone by so empty.  
  
But he wasn’t thinking about that. They got to the restaurant, pizza was great, the atmosphere was alright, and Rust wasn’t talking much, which was partially a good thing. There wouldn’t be a taste of existential crisis with the pizza. And Rust really looked good in his shirt and tie. Marty was a little worried that the waitress would try to hit on Rust, but Rust didn’t even seem to notice her there, because he was looking at Marty. Maybe Marty had something on his face.  
  
“This what you had in mind?” Rust asked.  
  
At that point, Marty was trying to deal with the dessert he definitely shouldn’t have ordered because he was already goddamn full of pizza. Rust was just sitting there in his fancy clothes, looking at him.  
  
“Yeah,” he said. “Sure you don’t want to try this?”  
  
“With your spoon?” Rust asked with a blank face, like when he thought Marty was doing something stupid or weird but didn’t have the energy or whatever to point that out. “Yeah, I’m sure.”  
  
“It’s good,” Marty said. “You like chocolate.”  
  
“We’ve got chocolate at home.”  
  
“That’s so not the point.”  
  
Rust rubbed the side of his nose but didn’t say anything. Marty took another spoonful of this thing that tasted of chocolate and cream and sugar and was a bit too much but in a very good way. Just like Rust. He bit his lip.  
  
“Anyway,” Rust said, “you remember your client’s cousin we were talking about earlier? I think I found her. She’s in St. Louis now.”  
  
“Goddamn, Rust,” Marty said, “I don’t want to talk about work now when we’re on a –“  
  
“What?”  
  
Marty cleared his throat. _Shit._ “When we’re eating. I don’t want to mix work with dessert. That just doesn’t work, Rust. You’ve got to know that.”  
  
“Alright,” Rust said slowly, shifting in his chair. For a second Marty felt like he was the suspect and Rust was going to pull out all his secrets without him realizing it at all. But then again, he often felt like that. And he didn’t think he had many secrets for Rust to figure out anyway.  
  
Besides, if Rust figured out what was going on inside Marty’s head, maybe he’d tell Marty, too. That’d be good.  
  
“Anything you’d like to talk, then?” Rust asked. “Instead of work?”  
  
“No,” Marty said, “no, we can talk about anything you like.”  
  
Rust stared at him.  
  
“But not about work. Or murders. Or existential philosophy. Or the universe. Or –“  
  
“Alright, I got it,” Rust said, “so, you don’t want me to talk.”  
  
Marty cleared his throat. He had almost finished his dessert. He should slow down or else the night would be over far too soon. Well, it was good that Rust was coming home with him anyway. He didn’t have to worry that they’d run out of things to eat before he’d managed to impress the man.  
  
“How about,” he said, glancing at Rust, “how about you tell me about Alaska?”  
  
“Alaska?” Rust asked. “Surely you’ve heard of Wikipedia.”  
  
“Shut up. I meant, your childhood. Or, I don’t know, how you became a cop. Or the last ten years. I don’t have a fucking clue what it’s like, working on a fishing boat. Just tell me something.”  
  
“About me.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“You want me to sit in a restaurant with you, wearing a clean shirt, and talk to you about myself.”  
  
Marty could see what that looked like. But he didn’t care. “Yeah.”  
  
“Alright,” Rust said, narrowing his eyes like he was trying to weight something. “Want to hear about my first girlfriend?”  
  
Marty could’ve stopped himself from grinning, probably, but why? “You bet that I want.”  
  
Rust seemed amused. “Okay. So, I was twenty-two and didn’t have a fucking clue what I was doing -”  
  
“God, Rust, I love this story.”  
  
“Shut up and let me talk,” Rust said, and then he talked about his first girlfriend for almost five minutes. Marty finished his dessert and then just sat there, looking at Rust. He managed to get Rust to tell a few more stories – not about other girlfriends, because then there was only Claire, and Rust didn’t talk about Claire and Marty didn’t ask, but about other things.  
  
It was a bit weird, trying to imagine what Rust had been like before… before losing his child. The longer he had known Rust, the more he had begun to think that all those sharp edges in Rust’s goddamn personality had something to do with the grief. And there was no way understanding it. Somehow Rust had managed to go on carrying an unimaginable grief, and yeah, maybe he would’ve been someone else without it, someone who might’ve smiled more and thought less about how life was essentially tragic and it was a burden to have been born in this world. But at least he was still here. At least he was here, in the restaurant, looking at Marty with mild amusement and maybe a bit of curiosity, or so Marty liked to think.  
  
When they got back home, Rust said something about taking the damn shirt off, walked to his bedroom and left the door open. Marty followed him. He didn’t know why but luckily, Rust didn’t ask. He hovered at the doorway when Rust unbuttoned the shirt and folded it on the back of the chair, then rested his hands on his hips and just stood their in his white tank top.  
  
“You happy with the furniture here?” Marty asked, glancing around. “Because we could get you, I don’t know, an armchair or something.”  
  
“I’m in the living room all the time, anyway.” Rust turned to him. “Or do you want me to stay in my room?”  
  
Marty almost smiled. “Fuck, no.”  
  
“Yeah, so I thought. I don’t need anything, Marty.”  
  
“Yeah, okay, but if you did… You like the colors? The rug? Because we could get you something you like.”  
  
“The rug –,” Rust paused and looked at the rug. Marty looked at it as well. There wasn’t much to see, because the rug was covered with books and clothes.  
  
“I want you to be comfortable.”  
  
“I’ve never been comfortable in my life,” Rust said, turning to him. “But you’re doing everything right, Marty. Don’t worry.”  
  
“What? I’m doing what right?”  
  
“I’m not sure,” Rust said, “but it’s working.”  
  
Marty frowned. “Great.”  
  
“I’m not going anywhere. Not until you throw me out, or, I don’t know, find a girlfriend after all.”  
  
“I’m not going to do that, Rust.”  
  
Rust stared at him for a few seconds, then took a deep breath. “Sometimes I don’t know if you realize what you’re saying, Marty.”  
  
“What did I –“  
  
“Nothing,” Rust said, “nothing to worry about. Now, can you get out of my room and close the door? I’ve been sitting in a restaurant full of people for ages. I’m going to spend ten minutes listening to my own fucking thoughts and then I’ll come to you. We can watch Jurassic Park if you like.”  
  
“Really?” Marty asked. He had been talking about it for at least two days, but Rust had told him it sounded stupid.  
  
Rust almost smiled at him. “You look like I just threw a bone at you.”  
  
“That’s a little bit offensive, don’t you think?” he said, but he was smiling back. “Alright, I’ll let you think about what’s wrong with the universe for ten minutes, and then we’ll watch Jurassic Park. I’ll have the chocolate ready for you.”  
  
He left before Rust could argue about that. It had taken him a while to realize Rust preferred white chocolate. He still couldn’t think about that without smiling. He’d have thought that Rust would like his chocolate dark and bitter, but no. Rust liked sweet things.  
  
  
**  
  
  
5.  
  
  
Marty tried online dating once, when Rust had been living with him for maybe two months. It was a fucking catastrophe, and later, he felt like maybe he ought to have guessed that. But the thing was, he hadn’t slept with anyone in months. He wasn’t looking for anything serious, no, he had Rust and he was happy with that. He was happy.  
  
But the thing was that these days, he seemed to be touching Rust all the time. He was always patting Rust’s knee or resting his hand on Rust’s shoulder or tugging the hem of Rust’s shirt when he thought there were wrinkles. Once, he had put his hand on the low of Rust’s back when they had been in the supermarket and he had been trying to steer Rust past a gang of teenagers. A moment later, he had realized he still had his palm pressing against Rust’s back. He had pulled his hand away and Rust hadn’t said anything about it, not then and not later, but, yeah, it was kind of obvious that he missed touching people. He wasn’t too excited about the idea of touching someone else than Rust, but it wasn’t like he was going to ask Rust to kiss him, right?  
  
Right?  
  
So, he found a nice woman on the dating site and told Rust a million times that he was going to go on a date but that it didn’t mean anything. He was happy with Rust and wasn’t looking for anything else, really, he just missed a few things that you could do with another person. Eventually, Rust told him to shut up about it but kept looking at Marty like he was worried Marty might be having a stroke. Sometimes Marty heard himself speaking and was a bit worried too, because he wasn’t making much sense.  
  
But he arranged the date anyway. Carol was a teacher in the middle school, a clever woman who didn’t seem impressed about Marty’s jokes but listened carefully when Marty gave up on trying to be funny and told her about his life. The problem was that there was nothing else going on in his life except Rust, so he ended up talking about Rust. He told her about the ten years that they’d been apart, and then he told her about what had happened before that, and she listened.  
  
“I don’t know why I’m talking about this,” Marty said. He didn’t remember he had ever talked about it with anyone except Rust. And, well, maybe it wasn’t surprising that it was a bit weird to talk to the closest person in your life about what it had felt like when he had slept with your wife ten years ago. “I was so angry at him,” he told Carol, “I wanted to kill him. I felt that I’d trusted him and he’d taken everything from me, _everything_ , and then he just disappeared and I didn’t know how to fix it, and also I still kind of wanted to kill him.”  
  
“Well, you had been very close,” Carol said.  
  
“Yeah. I don’t know if I even realized that, back then. Sometimes I wasn’t even sure if I _liked_ him. But he was my partner. He was an asshole, but he was my asshole, you know? And the things we had seen, at the job, the things we had seen and done together… that kind of stuff just sticks with you. And no one else could understand me but Rust.”  
  
“Yeah,” Carol said.  
  
“And later I’ve been thinking,” and he cleared his throat, “well, I’m not saying that I think about these things much, because what’d be the point, right? It’s all in the past. And I got Rust back, and I see my daughters sometimes, and Maggie and me, well, it’s always difficult to see her, but I guess that’s what it’s like. But what I’ve been thinking is that maybe I was so angry with Rust because I didn’t know how to be angry at myself. Or at Maggie. Well, I _was_ pissed at her, of course, but also I _knew_ it was me, I knew I’d been making these mistakes and known it and just thought it’d never catch me, you know? I thought I could get it all. So, I knew Maggie was right to leave me, and I knew I couldn’t be _actually_ angry at her for fucking someone else because I had been doing it first, so the only person I could be angry at was Rust.”  
  
“Yeah,” Carol said.  
  
“I felt so _betrayed_ ,” Marty said, “by him. And I started thinking that maybe it hadn’t been real, what we had, Rust and me. Maybe he’d just liked my wife. Maybe he’d wanted to sleep with my wife since the first time I brought him at our house for a dinner. Maybe all that time when I had thought we were friends, he had just been waiting for an opportunity to get to her. Maybe the seven years we’d been partners didn’t mean anything to him.”  
  
“Yeah,” Carol said, “I get that.”  
  
“But I think I was wrong,” Marty said, “I was just so hurt that I couldn’t see clearly. Because when I think about it now, when I think about Rust like he was when we were young – not that I’m _old_ or anything now but, you know – well, I don’t think about him and Maggie. Or it’s not the memory that sticks. What I think about is those seven years when he always had my back. I would’ve trusted him with my life. I _did_ trust him with my life. So, I’m just so damn glad that I got him back.”  
  
Carol smiled at him. He realized vaguely that they had finished eating already.  
  
“So, what about you?” He cleared his throat. “Ever been married?”  
  
“No,” Carol said and crossed her legs. “So, you’re living with him now?”  
  
“Yeah. It’s been great, really. I’m trying to make him cut down the cereal, but otherwise, I think we’re doing great. I didn’t think I was exactly lonely when I was living alone before, but now I can’t think about him moving out.”  
  
“And he’s not planning to move out?”  
  
“No, I don’t think so,” Marty said. “I was worried about that for a while, but he gave up his old place and moved all his stuff to my house, and now his bedroom is a mess, all his things lying around there, so I think he’s feeling at home with me. I hope so. It’s sometimes difficult to figure out what he’s thinking, and it’s kind of funny, you know, because _he_ can read people, he’s a goddamn expert. He could always get people to talk, to tell him their secrets. And sometimes I wonder if he’s doing that with me, like, not in a bad way, but… I don’t really mind. I want him to know me. And stay. I want him to stay.”  
  
“Sounds good,” Carol said.  
  
“He’s like a cactus,” Marty said, “he’s got thorns, a lot of them, but if you can ignore that, he’s… he’s…”  
  
Carol bit her lip.  
  
“I don’t think that metaphor works out,” Marty said. “Okay, maybe he’s an onion. He’s got layers and… no, that doesn’t work out either.” He took a deep breath. “I guess we’ve finished eating.”  
  
“Yeah,” Carol said. “It was nice.”  
  
“Yeah? So, would you perhaps want to, I don’t know, have a drink? Somewhere else?”  
  
“Marty,” Carol said, tilting her head to the side and watching him. _Shit._ He knew that look. He had enough experience with women that he knew there wasn’t going to be a drink, and there definitely wasn’t going to be sex. Well, that meant he could get back to Rust. Maybe they’d watch a movie. He’d been talking about Matrix and Rust had told him to fuck off, but maybe he’d get lucky tonight.  
  
“It’s alright,” he told Carol. “I get it. But I’ve got to say, I was prettier when I was younger. It was nice to meet you, though.”  
  
“I didn’t mean that,” Carol said. “You’ve been talking about Rust the whole evening.”  
  
“Yeah. Rust’s my…” But he couldn’t figure out how to finish that sentence, so he didn’t.  
  
“Exactly,” Carol said, which didn’t make sense at all. Then she took a deep breath and smiled a little, but her eyes were serious. “I know it isn’t my place to say anything, and it sounds like whatever’s going on in between you, it’s not something that you can explain to a stranger in an hour.”  
  
“I’ve been talking about Rust for _an hour?_ ”  
  
“A bit longer,” Carol said. “Do you want to hear what it sounds like to me? When you talk about him?”  
  
“Maybe,” Marty said, biting his lip. If she was going to tell him that she thought Rust was going to leave him, he didn’t want to hear that.  
  
“It sounds like you’re falling in love,” Carol said.  
  
Marty blinked.  
  
“It was nice to meet you,” Carol said and stood up, “but I’ve got two dogs waiting for me. And you’ve got someone at home you should get back to.”  
  
“Yeah,” Marty said, “I promised him I wouldn’t be late.” Then he bit his lip.  
  
Now Carol actually grinned. “So, maybe don’t keep him waiting. Good bye, Marty.”  
  
“Carol –,” he said and stood up.  
  
“Don’t say you’re sorry,” she said. “I don’t mind. There’re worse ways to spend an evening than to listen to a nice man talking about his boyfriend.”  
  
Then she left.  
  
Marty drove back home and then walked around a block twice before he could make himself go inside. Rust was sitting in the living room, drawing something in his ledger. Marty wanted to take a peek but was worried that if he went close enough, he’d end up petting Rust’s hair or something.  
  
“I’m back,” he said, hung his coat and walked to the kitchen. He needed coffee. Or alcohol, but Rust was still sober, and he definitely wasn’t going to ruin that by getting drunk when Rust was right there.  
  
He stared at the coffee machine for a while, but it was ten o’clock in the evening. Then he tried to find cereal, but Rust had eaten everything again.  
  
“So, you didn’t sleep with her,” Rust said, when Marty had settled on a glass of milk and chocolate biscuits.  
  
“How can you tell?” he asked, turning to Rust.  
  
Rust snorted. He was still drawing, didn’t even look at Marty now that Marty was facing him. He took his glass of milk, walked to the couch and sat down beside Rust.  
  
“You’re drawing a horse.”  
  
“Yeah. Needed something to do.”  
  
“While I was on a date.”  
  
Rust shrugged. The horse looked very good. There were other animals as well, a fox, a bear, a rabbit, filling the whole page.  
  
“I thought that was the notebook you use for work. Seems like a tricky case.”  
  
“So, how was it?” Rust asked without looking at him.  
  
Marty cleared his throat and switched on the television. He didn’t have a fucking clue what to do. When he had been driving back home, the only thing in his mind had been that he could never tell Rust. Things were so good in between them, surely he couldn’t tell Rust that he had messed up his date because his date had thought he was in love with Rust. Then he had started thinking that if someone he had never met before thought that, what did Rust think? Rust knew him better than anyone.  
  
“Not one of my greatest moments,” he said, staring at the television. “She told me I’m in love with you.”  
  
Rust actually flinched at that, then froze, stopped drawing the horse. “Really?” he asked with a perfectly steady voice.  
  
“Well,” Marty said, “I talked about you the whole evening.”  
  
Rust was quiet for a few seconds. “I thought you were good with women.”  
  
“I thought so too. But turns out they don’t like it if you tell them about your best friend and the stuff that happened with your wife years back and how goddamn happy you are that you got him back.”  
  
“You talked to her about Maggie? Was she a shrink or something?”  
  
“No. A middle-school teacher.”  
  
Rust snorted. “Sounds about right.”  
  
Marty shoved him at the arm with his elbow. “Shut up.”  
  
“Apparently, I’m not the one who needs to shut up,” Rust said and then sighed. “So, you spent the time talking to her about how pretty I used to be and she decided you’re taken.”  
  
“Not exactly,” Marty said. It was surprisingly easy to talk about this now that he had started already. And it made it easier that he looked at the television and not Rust. There was some kind of a reality show going on, half-naked people jumping into pools. “I told her that I couldn’t be angry at Maggie after… after the thing happened. Because, you know, she didn’t do anything I hadn’t done already. I should’ve been angry at myself, but I’ve never been good at that. So I got angry at you. And it kind of felt like you had cheated on me, too. Like all those years we’d been partners you had been just trying to get her.”  
  
“It wasn’t like that, Marty,” Rust said. “It wasn’t like that at all.”  
  
“Yeah, I suppose I realize that now.”  
  
“I liked her,” Rust said, “she was… she is a clever woman. Lovely. And too good for you. But you were the one constant in my life.”  
  
“Except for Laurie.”  
  
“Yeah, well,” Rust said slowly, “now it seems that I must’ve known from the beginning that wouldn’t work out. But I guess that’s an illusion. Maybe we had a chance. Or maybe I was just trying to do what you wanted me to do.”  
  
“Me?”  
  
“I don’t even know if I liked you in the beginning. It’s just, someone’s around all the time and you get to know them, and then you’re stuck.”  
  
Marty frowned. “Doesn’t sound romantic.”  
  
“I’m not a very romantic person.”  
  
“The fuck you aren’t.”  
  
Rust glanced at him. He glanced at Rust and then turned his gaze back on the television. He couldn’t understand the clothes young people wore these days.  
  
“I know this sounds bad,” Rust said, “but I think I was trying to get to you. If it hadn’t been about you, I would’ve had more sense and would’ve told her to go home.”  
  
"You were drunk.”  
  
“Yeah. Stop using that to cover up what I did.”  
  
“I’m not angry,” Marty said, “haven’t really been in years. I just… I was right there. With you. You saw me every day. I can’t think about why you’d…”  
  
Rust took a packet of cigarette from his pocket. He was wearing Marty’s sweatpants again. Marty hadn’t said anything about it, because he was worried Rust might stop.  
  
“I can’t explain it to you,” Rust said and lit a cigarette, “no more than you could tell that middle-school teacher what’s going on in this house.”  
  
Marty opened his mouth and then closed it. Then he switched off the television. Young people these days, who the fuck knew what was going on in their head. “Why did you cut your hair?”  
  
“Because you wanted me to.”  
  
“How did you know I wanted you to?”  
  
Rust glanced at him, the cigarette hanging from his mouth.  
  
“I’m that obvious?”  
  
Rust shrugged. “I don’t think you’re _obvious_ , not more than anyone else. And you know, you’re so good at being nice to people that it sometimes makes it harder to read you. But…”  
  
“But you’re very good at it.”  
  
“I’ve been around you for a long time,” Rust said, “trying to figure out what the hell is going on in your head.”  
  
“Care to tell me?”  
  
Rust shook his head. “It’s not obvious.”  
  
“What do you think about –,” Marty started and then paused, rubbed his palms against his trousers. He sounded nervous, but there was nothing he could do about it and besides, Rust would notice anyway. “This other thing. This, I don’t know, that I’m falling in love with you.”  
  
Rust was quiet for a long time. Marty regretted switching off the television, but he was worried that if he took the remote control now, his hands would be shaking.  
  
“I don’t know,” Rust said finally. His voice was easy, like he was talking about the weather, only he never talked about the weather, and it was definitely an act. Marty appreciated the gesture, though. “I’ve been thinking about it.”  
  
“You’ve been thinking about it?”  
  
“Yeah. Not much else to think about here. All these cases we’ve got, this private investigator thing, it’s just too damn easy.”  
  
“Yeah,” Marty said, biting his lip, “and you’re overdoing it, man. You keep giving them more information than they asked for. My clients are getting confused.”  
  
“Well, maybe you should hire someone less competent.”  
  
“Maybe I should,” Marty said and took a deep breath. He would never trade Rust for anyone. “You think there’s anything to it?”  
  
Rust shook his head slowly. “I don’t know. I guess if I knew, you’d know, too.”  
  
“I’m not so sure about that.”  
  
“I hope there is,” Rust said and sucked the cigarette, his cheeks hollowing.  
  
Marty felt like he was about to choke on his own heart. _Bloody hell._ “You hope there’s something to it?”  
  
“Yeah.” Rust glanced at him sharply. “You asked.”  
  
“Yeah, I’m not… I’m just surprised.”  
  
“Are you, now?”  
  
“Don’t sound like that. We can’t all be clever as you, asshole.” It helped a little. And Rust smiled around the cigarette, so he still liked it when Marty called him clever. And an asshole. “I feel like I should ask you what you feel.”  
  
“Fucking terrifying, isn’t it?” Rust said, put the cigarette out and rubbed the side of his nose. He wasn’t looking at Marty. “I don’t want you to think that I’m not… satisfied with how the things are. Because I am. This is, like, living with you is a fucking dream after the past ten years. After the past seventeen years, probably. It’s too bad that I can’t drink but otherwise, I kind of thought I’d be dead at this point, and it turns out I’m not and I’m not even feeling sorry for myself. This is good, Marty.”  
  
“Yeah,” Marty said, “but…”  
  
“I’ve never not liked you that way.”  
  
Marty shifted on the couch. “What that’s supposed to mean?”  
  
“That there’s not been time when I wouldn’t have… in right circumstances, if you’d been willing, and if there had been nothing else to consider.”  
  
“What? You would’ve what?”  
  
“But someone I like once told me sex is a social construct,” Rust said and glanced at him. “I guess you could say that it just was never going to happen. Not a fucking chance. There was some kind of a limit to your ability to fuck things up, and that’d been… you wouldn’t have done that. Even if you’d wanted to. Which you didn’t. And I wanted to keep you around. So, I think I barely thought about it.”  
  
“Thought about…”  
  
“But the part that’s not a social construct,” Rust said. He was smiling a little, like he really enjoyed saying _a social construct._ “Yeah.”  
  
“You would’ve had sex with me? Even back then?”  
  
“Took you long enough to figure that out,” Rust said. “And you think you can always tell when someone wants to fuck you.”  
  
“Fuck me –“  
  
Rust glanced at the kitchen. “Anyway, are you hungry? Because I could eat something. We’re out of cereal, by the way.”  
  
“We aren’t finished with this conversation,” Marty said.  
  
He had a feeling that Rust looked happy about that, but his own mind was a mess so he really couldn’t tell for sure. “We aren’t?”  
  
“No,” Marty said. “Sit down, young man. We’re going to talk about this.”  
  
Now Rust actually smiled. “I’m sitting. And I’m not exactly young anymore.”  
  
“ I think you look very good,” Marty said. “I kind of liked your other look as well, the long hair and the moustache, but you looked like someone who’d been drinking for ten years straight. And this… the new hair, and… and everything. I feel like I’ve got you back.”  
  
“I suppose you have,” Rust said slowly.  
  
“And I want to touch you all the time,” Marty said, making sure he had his hands safely in his lap, “like, I feel like if I don’t watch it, I’m going to end up petting your hair or something. But I thought that’s just the way I am. I like touching people. And you’re… you’re kind of my… you’re the one I have.”  
  
Rust looked sad about that.  
  
“And I wouldn’t replace you with anyone,” Marty said, “you idiot, so stop looking like you’re going to tell me you’re sorry that I had to settle for you. Because I didn’t _settle_ , I got more than I asked. Much more.”  
  
“Right,” Rust said.  
  
“I don’t think I’m gay,” Marty said, “but –“  
  
Rust just stared at him.  
  
“Can you give me some time?”  
  
“Yeah,” Rust said slowly, “yeah, I’ve got nowhere else to be. My funeral, eventually, but that’s it.”  
  
Marty took a deep breath. “Didn’t think you’d show up.”  
  
Rust smiled a little. “Well, you’re right about that. So, time.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“In a meanwhile,” Rust said, “you can touch me. If you want. No reason to hold back, even if it doesn’t go anywhere.”  
  
“You don’t mind?”  
  
“No, Marty, I don’t _mind._ And if I did, I’d let you know.”  
  
“Yeah?”  
  
“I think it’d be a bit difficult for you to touch me if I didn’t like it,” Rust said. “I know I’m still recovering and all, but I _was_ an undercover cop in drug business. I’ve got a few tricks.”  
  
“Or you could just tell me.”  
  
“Or I could just tell you.” Rust licked his lips. “We need to get more cereal.”  
  
“We should go to Walmart tomorrow,” Marty said, raised his hand, unclenched his fist and slowly took Rust’s hand. Rust let him. He held Rust’s hand in his lap, in between his own. It was warm and familiar. “I’m a little worried about your cereal addiction.”  
  
“Yeah,” Rust said, watching him, “I’m a little worried, too. But I guess we only live once, and life is just an endless maze of meaningless choices.”  
  
Marty laughed and squeezed Rust’s hand. “I’ve got no fucking idea why I like you so much.”  
  
  
**  
  
  
6.  
  
  
“Dad,” Macie said in the phone, “I’m going to be staying with mom for a weekend. We should all go out for a dinner.”  
  
Marty rubbed his chin. “Really? Have you asked your mother?”  
  
“She says it’s fine.”  
  
“Really?”  
  
“Dad,” Macie said, “come on. We’re all adults here.”  
  
Marty bit his lip. That was technically true. “Alright. I’ve got nothing else going on, so you just tell me when and where. And, darling –“  
  
“Yeah?”  
  
“You know Rust’s living with me now, right?” he asked and glanced at Rust, who was sitting on the couch next to him, reading a book Marty didn’t want to know about. It had the word _philosophy_ on its cover and Rust looked very thoughtful when he was reading it, so, no. “I suppose mom’s told you that?”  
  
“Yeah,” Macie said in a tone that suggested that was old news. “Mom told me. I think it’s great that you aren’t all by yourself, dad.”  
  
“Yeah,” Marty said, reached over and placed his hand on Rust’s thigh. “I just thought, maybe I should ask him if he wants to come along? When we have dinner?”  
  
“Oh,” Macie said at the same time when Rust fixed his gaze on Marty. “Yeah, of course.”  
  
“I’ll ask him,” Marty said. Rust was shaking his head with a murderous look in his eyes. He looked so cute when he was doing that. Marty squeezed his thigh and Rust hit him on the elbow with the book but nicely. “I can’t wait to see you, sweetheart.”  
  
“Yeah, me too,” Macie said.  
  
Marty put the phone away.  
  
“I’m not coming to a family dinner,” Rust said.  
  
“Are you sure?” Marty asked and rested his hand on Rust’s shoulder. One morning not so long ago, he had caught Rust trying to do push-ups. He had been angry at Rust for being so reckless and not remembering he’d been stabbed in the guts less than three months ago, and Rust had been angry at him for thinking that he wasn’t well enough to do a few push-ups. But they had started going on a walk almost every day. And Rust wasn’t so impossibly thin anymore, probably because of the amount of cereal he ate.  
  
“You don’t really want me there,” Rust said and then glanced at Marty again. “Bloody hell, why do you want me there?”  
  
“I don’t know.” He stroked the back of Rust’s neck with his thumb. “Feels like you should be there.”  
  
“I’m not coming,” Rust said. “Not this time. Maybe later.”  
  
“Too bad.”  
  
“I bet you’re going to talk about me like you’re in love with me,” Rust said. “And I don’t want to be around for that. I might smile.”  
  
“You think I’m going to talk about you like that?”  
  
“I don’t think you can help it. You don’t have a fucking clue what you’re doing.”  
  
At the moment, he was petting Rust’s hair. “I don’t know what Maggie’s going to think. About us.”  
  
“You don’t have to tell her.”  
  
“She’s going to figure it out, though.”  
  
“Of course she’s going to figure it out,” Rust said. He was leaning his head into Marty’s hand but just a little. It was one of the things Marty loved: how sometimes Rust took his touches like someone who’d been starving for it and still didn’t know what to do.  
  
And sometimes Rust touched him, too. It wasn’t so different than what they had had years ago: an easy pat on the shoulder, a brush of fingers on the elbow, a steady hand on the back. The difference was that they were living together now, and there was no one else, and they both were waiting for it to grow into something else.  
  
“It’s not like you’d have anything to tell her,” Rust said, watching him, “about us. Nothing she doesn’t already know. That we get along and that we’re living together.”  
  
“That’s bullshit and you know it.”  
  
“Yeah, but what would you say to her? We aren’t exactly a couple.”  
  
“Yes, we are,” Marty said and then bit his lip. He let his hand fall back onto Rust’s shoulder but left it there. “Kind of. Don’t you think so?”  
  
Rust was quiet for a long time. “That’s what you’d tell her?”  
  
What Marty could tell her – well, he could tell her that nothing had changed but it all felt different somehow. The same, but different. He surely wouldn’t say a word about how it was like he was counting time in his head: how long until they’d have sex? Because surely that was where this was going, only if Marty thought about it too much, he started panicking a little. He didn’t know if he wanted to have sex with Rust. He couldn’t imagine it. He was a straight man and this was madness – but then he usually forgot about it soon enough and found himself petting Rust’s knee or thinking about how he wanted to push his hands under Rust’s shirt, and yeah, he wasn’t as good at lying himself than he’d been when he’d been younger.  
  
“I’m not going to tell her anything,” he told Rust. “But aren’t we?”  
  
“I don’t think it matters what we call it,” Rust said.  
  
“Well, I do,” Marty said. “It helps me make sense of things. And Rust, you’re my _in case of emergency._ In my phone. If I knock my head on the pavement or something, the nurses are going to call you.”  
  
“Lucky me,” Rust said.  
  
“And you should put me there,” Marty said, “in your contact list, just put _ICE_ in front of my name. Because if something happens to you, they aren’t going to know that they should call me, because you don’t even think we’re a couple.”  
  
“You’ve been stuck in my head for seventeen years,” Rust said, “and you can call me whatever you want.”  
  
“ _Sweetheart_?”  
  
“Okay, I take that back,” Rust said, glaring at him. Then something shifted on his face. “I think _partner_ might be suiting. Feels familiar, too.”  
  
“Yeah, it does,” Marty said. He was petting Rust’s back now. The television was on but the volume wasn’t, they should start working soon but not yet, and the sunlight was coming through the windows, hitting the kitchen floor. There was a lot of dust and crumbles there. Apparently they both were pretty decent at putting things into a dish machine and so far, they’d managed to do laundry often enough that they hadn’t run out of clean clothes yet. But vacuuming was another thing. They’d have to talk about it eventually, because Marty hated sleeping with crumbles stuck in between his toes.  
  
“I’m not going to try to explain this to Maggie,” he said to Rust. “But man, sometimes I feel like I don’t know what the hell I’m doing.”  
  
“Well, that should be a familiar feeling for you,” Rust said. “You need a hug or something?”  
  
“Wouldn’t hurt,” Marty said. He was kind of leaning into Rust’s general direction now.  
  
“About that case,” Rust said, shifting closer to Marty so that he was kind of leaning his back against Marty’s chest now. Marty draped his arms around Rust and pulled him closer. “That inheritance thing we’ve got on.”  
  
“Yeah, I know.”  
  
“I think we still should talk to the sister.”  
  
“It’s waste of time, Rust,” Marty said and pushed his nose into Rust’s hair, just because Rust didn’t seem to mind. “This isn’t a goddamn murder investigation. We don’t need to do everything so thoroughly.”  
  
“Yeah,” Rust said, “but I’m bored.”  
  
“How the hell can you bored? You’ve got your books and you’ve got me.”  
  
“Yeah, well, you figure that out.”  
  
“If you need more excitement in your life,” Marty said, closing his eyes, “just tell me. I can be very exciting.”  
  
He could feel Rust breathing in and out. It was one of those things he knew he had missed but he hadn’t known he’d missed so badly – having someone in his arms.  
  
“I bet you can,” Rust said. It sounded like a dare. And Marty would take on it, he _would,_ soon. But not yet.  
  
Sometimes he wondered what the hell was taking him so long. Rust had practically said he wanted to sleep with Marty. He was right there. He was handsome and warm and he knew Marty through and through and he was Marty’s third favorite person in the whole fucking world, right? And Marty didn’t have much history with being too thoughtful about sex. So, it kind of didn’t make sense that he couldn’t just tell Rust to take his clothes off and then -  
  
But maybe that was the problem. He couldn’t think about what they’d do then. And Rust was his _third favorite person_. He couldn’t mess this up. He just couldn’t. Rust meant everything to him. And it had been ten years since he’d had sex with someone who meant anything more than good time.  
  
So, that was why he still jerked off in the shower and told himself Rust didn’t hear him doing it.  
  
“Sorry,” he said.  
  
“What the fuck are you apologizing for?” Rust asked, even though he probably knew. “Just get me more difficult cases to work on.”  
  
“We can go talk to the sister,” Marty said, “if you want to. But the client isn’t paying us enough.”  
  
“I don’t care. It’ll be nice. Just like the old days.”  
  
“Yeah,” Marty said.  
  
They drove two hours to talk to the client’s sister face-to-face. It didn’t help at all work-wise, but the scenery was nice, and Rust had been right: it was like the old days. They stopped at McDonald’s at the side of the road and ate in the car, looking at the birds on the sky and the land that was just open to every direction, and Rust talked about his visions, which he never did. They had ice cream for the dessert and Marty kept reaching over to touch Rust’s knee and wondered what it’d be like to kiss him.  
  
  
**  
  
  
He had dinner with Maggie and Macie on Saturday night. Afterwards, Macie took Maggie’s car and went to see some old friends, and Marty took Maggie home. Maggie told him he didn’t need to, she could ask the what-was-his-name to come fetch her, and Marty told her not to be stupid, their house was on Marty’s way anyway. It wasn’t and they both knew it, but Maggie got into his car and sat there in the passenger seat, quiet and beautiful and oddly familiar even though there were all these new layers on her that Marty knew nothing about, the whole life he didn’t belong to.  
  
“So,” Maggie said, “Rust’s still living with you.”  
  
Marty squeezed the wheel. “Yeah.”  
  
“It’s been…”  
  
“Three months, pretty much.”  
  
“And he’s not planning to…”  
  
“No,” he said. “No, I hope he’s staying with me.”  
  
“For good?”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
Maggie was quiet for a moment. “So, you aren’t… It’s not my business, I know. But you don’t think you’re going to, I don’t know, marry again?”  
  
Marty cleared his throat. “Honey –“ _Shit._ “Sorry.”  
  
“It’s alright,” Maggie said. She didn’t sound angry, maybe just a little tired. “I always thought you’d marry again.”  
  
“Yeah, that’s…” Goddamn. “Me and Rust, we go a long way back. You know that. It feels much more right to be with him than with… I don’t know, some woman I could find online.”  
  
“But that’s not –“ Maggie paused and glanced at him. “Marty?”  
  
“Yeah, well,” Marty said, trying to sound like he wasn’t panicking a little.  
  
“You and Rust?”  
  
“It’s nothing,” he said, “we’re just old friends who’re planning to live together for… forever, hopefully. It’s nothing else. Yet. But…”  
  
“Holy shit,” Maggie said. She was smiling a little now. “And I thought you’d never forgive him.”  
  
“Well, I’m full of surprises,” Marty said. Goddamn, this was terrible. He wanted to loosen his tie but didn’t dare to let go of the wheel because surely his hands were shaking.  
  
“Any specific reason why you’re telling me?”  
  
“I don’t know.” He glanced at her. “There’s nothing to tell. I haven’t told anyone because there’s nothing to tell. It’s just… you and me, Maggie, we…”  
  
“Yeah,” she said.  
  
“It just feels like something you should know.”  
  
“I appreciate that.”  
  
“And also I… I need you to know me. Because we were…”  
  
“I know.” Maggie was quiet for a moment, looking through the side window. “I think it’s good, Marty. I always thought Rust was good for you, you know. You’re so different, you’ve got different problems, I always felt that it was a good fit somehow. And you used to look at him as if you couldn’t decide if you hated his guts or thought he was a miracle.”  
  
“Well, I’ve decided now.”  
  
“Good.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“When you see the girls,” Maggie said, “I won’t mind if you take him with you. Obviously. They know him already, kind of. I think they both had a crush on him back in the day.”  
  
“A crush on him? On Rust?”  
  
“Yeah, well, he was their dad’s handsome partner.” Maggie glanced at him. “Are you going to tell the girls?”  
  
“No,” he said, “not yet. There’s nothing to tell.”  
  
“Alright,” Maggie said.  
  
“And you?” Marty asked, his voice coming out thin. “How’re things? How’s…”  
  
“It’s fine,” Maggie said, “everything’s fine. I mean, Andy’s mother died last winter, so it’s been…”  
  
“I’m sorry.”  
  
“Thank you. It’s been… well, you know. But we’re fine. I’m fine.” She glanced at him. “You and me, we’ve forgiven each other a long time ago, right?”  
  
“Yeah,” Marty said, “we have.”  
  
“Good,” Maggie said. “So, take the next one right and then we’re there.”  
  
“I know where your house is,” Marty said and put on the turn signal.  
  
  
**  
  
  
“I told her,” he said when he came home. Rust turned to look at him from the couch where he was sitting in with at least three books in his lap, the fucking madman.  
  
“Fuck,” Rust said.  
  
“Yeah,” Marty said and walked to the kitchen. “She told me to tell you that you should be nice to me.”  
  
“The fuck she did,” Rust said, but he was smiling.  
  
  
**  
  
  
He told Rust that there were crumbles in his sheets and that they should probably talk about housework. He expected Rust to be philosophical about it or perhaps brush the subject off with some kind of a pessimistic statement, but it turned out that Rust had been thinking about it. In ten minutes, they had agreed on a system: they would split everything, take turns with every task and follow the timetable they had discussed together. That evening, Marty did the dishes and thought about how perfect their system was. Everything would go smoothly. They’d never have to argue about housework.  
  
A week later, they had an argument about the dishes. Marty wasn’t sure what it was about, but there was no denying that he had started it. He had had a headache for hours and he was tired and it was Rust’s turn and there weren’t clean pans, and besides, he thought Rust was doing the dishes wrong. He ended up washing a pan mostly to irritate Rust, and when he had done that, he couldn’t remember what he had been going to do with the pan. He went to his bedroom and closed the door.  
  
Fifteen minutes later, he returned to the living room. Rust was sitting on the couch, looking exceptionally unhappy but like he was trying to hide it.  
  
“What’s wrong with me?” Marty asked and sat down beside him.  
  
“Nothing.”  
  
“I don’t want to fight with you. Especially not about _housework._ That’s just so…”  
  
“Yeah, I know,” Rust said and took a deep breath. “It’s going to happen again, though.”  
  
“No, it’s not.”  
  
“You want me to move out?”  
  
“Of course not.”  
  
“Then we’re going to fight about housework again,” Rust said with a grim voice. “That shit doesn’t do itself.”  
  
“Maybe if we just went back to how things were,” Marty said. “And we’d just… do things when we feel like it.”  
  
“I’ve been thinking for two months that the bathroom is filthy,” Rust said. “I’ve cleaned it at least four times and you haven’t done anything to it.”  
  
“I’ve cleaned it every week.”  
  
“You just pour cleaner into the toilet bowl and think that’s enough.”  
  
“Well, it is.”  
  
“Fuck no. You’ve got to clean the outside as well. And you’ve to clean the sink.”  
  
Marty opened his mouth and then closed it. “I don’t like this conversation.”  
  
“Yeah, me neither,” Rust said.  
  
“This is almost like we’re a couple,” Marty said and bit his lip. Then he took a deep breath. “Oh my god, Rust. We’re a couple.”  
  
“We could just be cranky roommates,” Rust said.  
  
“You don’t mean that.”  
  
“Of course I don’t mean that. If we were just roommates, I would’ve already moved out. How can you not think that you’ve got to clean the sink?”  
  
Marty realized vaguely that he was smiling. “We’re a couple, only there’s no sex.”  
  
“That’s entirely on you, man,” Rust said, sounding like he was still pissed about the bathroom, which was just fine, because Marty was still pissed about the dishes.  
  
“I know. Sorry about that.”  
  
“You aren’t supposed to _apologize._ ”  
  
“Sorry,” he said and then bit his lip. Rust was eyeing him like he was about to tell Marty to fuck off. But he wouldn’t. They were stuck with each other, Marty was certain of it. Nothing else made sense. “It’s not like I’m not thinking about it.”  
  
“We aren’t going to talk about sex now,” Rust said, “not when we just talked about cleaning the bathroom.”  
  
“Have you done it?”  
  
“For fuck’s sake, Marty,” Rust said and stood up. He walked to the kitchen, poured himself a glass of apple juice and drank it, clearly unhappy that it wasn’t booze. Then he leaned his elbows against the counter and fixed his eyes on Marty.  
  
“You’re fucking pretty, Rust.”  
  
“Fuck you,” Rust said and cleared his throat. “Yeah, I have done it.”  
  
“With a man.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“More than once?”  
  
“Yeah,” Rust said. Now he was watching Marty as if he tried to figure out what would be too much.  
  
“So, it wasn’t like… you didn’t just try it once.”  
  
“No, I’ve known pretty much my whole life that I don’t give a shit about gender,” Rust said, took a cigarette, blinked at it and then put it back in the packet.  
  
“You’ve had boyfriends.”  
  
“Not really. Just… encounters. A few times.”  
  
Marty smiled a little. “So, I’m special.”  
  
Rust looked at him like he was an idiot. “Yeah, you’re special. But not because you’re a man. You’re the only person that I can’t get rid of.”  
  
“Good for you.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“So,” Marty said and pulled his shoulders back, “anal sex.”  
  
Rust frowned at him. “Marty, what the hell are you –“  
  
“I can talk about it,” he said. “I _can._ ”  
  
Rust was shaking his head now. “I don’t know what to do with you, Marty. You’re just so fucking –“  
  
“Thank you,” he cut in. “So, you’ve tried it?”  
  
“Yeah, I’ve tried it,” Rust said. “I think this conversation is highly irrelevant –“  
  
“Do you want to –“ Marty paused and thought about it. He wasn’t sure how he was supposed to say it. “Do you have a preference? Should I be expecting that you want me to let you –“  
  
“Fucking hell,” Rust said and drank apple juice straight from the box. “I don’t care.”  
  
“You don’t want to fuck me?”  
  
Rust stared at him with wide eyes.  
  
“Sorry,” Marty said and stood up. His headache was gone but his heart was beating like crazy. “I know I’m kind of throwing all this on you and that you’re pissed about the bathroom, but we’ve already started this conversation, so I think we might as well talk about it now. Or else I’m going to chicken out.”  
  
“We can talk about it,” Rust said in a quiet voice. Marty walked to the counter and leaned his elbows against it, just like Rust but from the other side so that they were kind of facing each other. Rust smelled of apple juice and garlic. They had eaten in a restaurant today and the waitress had asked them twice if they were waiting for more company. Marty had kind of wanted to ask her why two guys couldn’t fucking enjoy a romantic meal together without all this hassle.  
  
“Good,” he told Rust now, “because I’ve been thinking about it.”  
  
“You said that.”  
  
“I’ve always thought that you’re hot, Rust.”  
  
Rust snorted.  
  
“I mean it.”  
  
“You don’t have to flirt at me,” Rust said. “You already got me.”  
  
“I’m a lucky bastard,” Marty said and rubbed his chin. “So, you don’t care about the details?”  
  
“Anything goes,” Rust said. “Anything as long it’s with you. And no violence. I’ve had enough that sort, I don’t want it in bed.”  
  
“Fair enough,” Marty said and turned to look at the box of apple juice. “I’m going to be honest, Rust, I don’t know if I ever want to take it up my arse.”  
  
“I’m going to be honest, Marty,” Rust said, “we aren’t going to do anything like that for a fucking long time. It’s been seventeen years and we haven’t even kissed.”  
  
“You’ve been counting.”  
  
“I’m good at math.”  
  
“You’re good at goddamn everything,” Marty said and straightened his back. He had never given much thought to Rust’s mouth. “So, you’ve been waiting seventeen years for me to kiss you.”  
  
Rust stared at him. “Come on, man.”  
  
“I might be a disappointment.”  
  
“We’ll try again,” Rust said. “Come on.”  
  
“I don’t know what I’m doing here, Rust.”  
  
“I don’t fucking care,” Rust said and straightened his back. Then he just stood there, staring at Marty, his eyes as sharp as ever.  
  
Marty cleared his throat and walked to him, stopped only when he was close enough that he had to tilt his chin up to look Rust in the eyes. Well, this was weird.  
  
“Come on, Marty,” Rust said, his voice quiet and hoarse.  
  
“You do it,” Marty said.  
  
“No, you do it,” Rust said. “I’m right here.”  
  
So, Marty had been thinking about how he would kiss Rust: manly, with determination and passion and like he wasn’t freaking out about it. It was kind of funny that in his head, he had been the taller one.  
  
He placed his hands on Rust’s shoulders and ignored the fact that they were shaking, and then he raised them a little, onto Rust’s neck, his thumbs brushing against Rust’s chin. God, he loved this man.  
  
“You’re too tall,” he said, and Rust leaned down just a little, which was probably the fucking hottest thing anyone had ever done for Marty. Or maybe it was a little difficult to remember anything else now that he had Rust right here.  
  
He kissed Rust on the mouth.  
  
Rust grabbed the front of his shirt and kissed him back. It was clumsy, it was weird, he was kissing _Rust_ from all the goddamn people, and it was perfect.  
  
  
**  
  
  
7.  
  
  
The first time he kissed Rust, it ended when one of them elbowed the box of apple juice from the counter onto the floor. They cleaned the mess together. Rust’s shirt was wrinkled and his hair was sticking into odd directions from where Marty had pushed his fingers through it, and Marty was still out of breath and half-hard in his pants and couldn’t think about anything besides the fact that he had kissed Rust. _He had kissed Rust._ Right now. In their kitchen. Against the counter. And Rust had kissed him back, and it had been a little awkward in the beginning but then great, and he wanted to do it again.  
  
The second time he kissed Rust was half an hour later. They were sitting on the couch, watching the news, only when Marty put his hand on Rust’s thigh in between the insert of the local economy, Rust dropped the remote control and turned to him. He squeezed Rust’s thigh and Rust took his face in between his hands. Rust’s hands felt bigger than he had expected, but then he didn’t have time to think about it anymore, because they were kissing again.  
  
“Stop wriggling,” Rust said, when Marty was trying to push his hands under his shirt. He avoided the stab wound but ran his palm up on Rust’s chest, and Rust kissed him and then pushed him down from the shoulders until he was kind of lying on the couch and Rust was on him.  
  
He didn’t have a fucking clue why it had taken him so long to kiss Rust. Yeah, alright, it was a little overwhelming to be kissing someone who could manhandle him like this, who could push him against the couch so easily, and who had such big hands and a hint of stubble on his chin and a low voice with which to mutter things like _bloody hell, Marty_. But he liked it. He fucking liked it. He -  
  
“Alright?” he asked, because Rust had stopped kissing him and was just staring at him now. “I’ve got something on my face or what?”  
  
“No,” Rust said, “no, it’s just…” But he didn’t finish it.  
  
“Need to slow down?”  
  
“Shut up,” Rust said, which sounded a lot better.  
  
“I want to jerk you off,” Marty said and kissed him.  
  
Rust kissed him back, then pulled away and frowned at him. “Now?”  
  
“Yeah, now,” he said and brushed his fingers over Rust’s crotch. “I think I’m old enough.”  
  
“Fuck you,” Rust said with a concerned voice. “I thought you were going to panic about this.”  
  
“I’ll do it later.”  
  
“I don’t mind if you just want to kiss me.”  
  
“Goddamn, Rust,” Marty said, “look at me. Look at my face. You can detect bullshit from other side of the room. I’m telling you that I want you to take your pants off and I want to get my hand on your dick and get you off. Am I lying or what?”  
  
Rust stared at him. “You aren’t lying. But you’re an idiot.”  
  
“It’s just a dick,” he said and raised his hand to pet Rust’s hair. If he shifted a little, he could press his cock against the crook of Rust’s thigh. He bit back what would’ve certainly been a moan and focused on petting Rust’s hair.  
  
“Yeah,” Rust said. “Okay.”  
  
“Yeah?”  
  
Rust nodded. Marty kissed him and tried to undo his zipper, and that was when they fell off the couch. He landed on the remote control and Rust landed on him, which was probably for the best, because he was more worried about Rust’s condition than his. He could take this. He was just fucking glad that there was no one else to see him now, only Rust, and Rust had already seen everything.  
  
“Bed,” Rust said.  
  
“I don’t think I can move,” Marty said, and Rust took his hand and helped him to get up from the floor.  
  
They went to his bedroom. He closed the door and then wondered why the hell he had done it, but Rust was already standing beside his bed, his hands rested on his hips, looking at the bed as if he was wondering what they were going to do with it. Marty walked to him and kissed the back of his neck. If he pressed his dick against Rust’s ass, well, Rust didn’t seem to mind. He tried to unzip Rust’s jeans but his fingers were clumsy and in the end, Rust did it for him. Then Rust turned to face him and walked them to the bed, sat down and pulled Marty with him. It was alright. Everything was alright, because Rust knew what he was doing, and Marty didn’t but he was more than willing to ignore that, and besides, Rust was kind of trying to get rid of Marty’s trousers now.  
  
“Marty –“  
  
“Yeah,” he said and tugged his trousers down to his knees, underpants too, because what the hell. Rust had seen his dick before. He was a bit worried about his performance because alright, he was nervous, but then Rust kissed him and he got kind of busy with Rust’s jeans.  
  
_Who would’ve thought_ , he was thinking hazily. Who would’ve thought that he’d let Rust fucking Cohle push him down against the mattress, his breathing hard as if he’d been running a marathon, and his heart stuck in his throat? Because he hadn’t. He hadn’t had the goddamn imagination. He kind of lost the track when Rust somehow got his shirt off him, then got rid of his own clothes and threw them at the floor, and Marty wanted to touch him but there was just too much going on, and then it all slowed down. Rust was kneeling in between Marty’s thighs, his hands gripping Marty’s hips just a little bit too tight, and then he leaned down and took Marty’s dick in his mouth.  
  
Oh, bloody fucking _hell_ -  
  
Rust made a smug sound. Marty didn’t know how that was even fucking possible since Rust’s mouth was full of his dick, but he wasn’t going to ask now, was he? He bit his lip and pushed his fingers into Rust’s hair, carefully, gently, because he was going to be nice about this, damn right, he was going to be as nice to Rust as he had ever been to anyone, he was going to get it right this time, he was going to give Rust every fucking good thing that still was in him. He was going to kiss Rust until they’d both run out of oxygen. He was going to buy Rust all the cereal in the world. He was going to clean the bathroom the way Rust wanted, even though it was madness, because who the hell cleaned _the sink?_  
  
“Man,” he said, because apparently thinking about the sink was doing it for him, “Rust, man, I’m close, so if you –“  
  
Rust squeezed his hips tighter.  
  
He was going to buy Rust everything. Flowers, a pony, a murder manual, every goddamn philosophy book there was, anything Rust might want. He was going to -  
  
“Really,” he said, “Rust, I think –“  
  
And then he came. Rust swallowed some and spit the rest in the napkin he got from Marty’s bedside table, which was very observant of him. Marty didn’t think he could remember his own name right now.  
  
“Come here,” he said, and Rust settled against his side, all that warm human skin. He kissed Rust’s ear, then the corner of his eye, then his chin, then finally his mouth, when Rust managed to get his head to the right angle. “You taste of cum.”  
  
“Surprise, motherfucker,” Rust said.  
  
“I tried to warn you.”  
  
“Yeah, I noticed.”  
  
“I’ve never done that.”  
  
“I know,” Rust said, “it doesn’t matter, I don’t expect – what the hell, Marty?”  
  
Marty climbed onto his knees, then settled himself in between Rust’s legs. It was a bit difficult, because Rust wasn’t really co-operating. “I bet I’m going to be good at it.”  
  
“You don’t have to suck my dick,” Rust said, leaning up against his elbows, his eyes sharp on Marty. His dick was hard against his stomach and there was a stain on the hem of his shirt. Apparently he hadn’t managed to lose the shirt yet, which was just wrong.  
  
“I know I don’t have to,” Marty said, “but I’m competitive. Take the shirt off.”  
  
“This isn’t a competition,” Rust said but took his shirt off.  
  
“I know. I’m going to be better at this than you are, just give me a few weeks. But I’m going to have to practice.”  
  
Rust snorted, only it sounded a little disoriented.  
  
“Don’t laugh,” Marty said. “And don’t look at me like that. I’m fifty-three years old, I’m allowed to have sex. Don’t move.”  
  
“Marty –“  
  
“Be quiet, I’m trying to concentrate.”  
  
“Marty,” Rust said again. There was this certain tone in his voice, like he was about to start talking his bullshit again, about existence and time and voids and how Marty didn’t have to suck his dick. But Marty liked to think that he was great at giving head. He’d figure out how to do it to Rust soon enough. And Rust’s dick was smaller than his, which was kind of great, because Rust’s brains certainly were bigger. Apparently there was some kind of justice in the universe after all. He licked his lips and then got down in between Rust’s thighs.  
  
He wasn’t exactly sure what he had expected, but the voice Rust made surely wasn’t it.  
  
So, alright, this would take some practice. But if he had fucking _known_ that this would make Rust shut up, he would’ve done this years ago. No voids, no meaningless existence, no colors of the universe or any other bullshit like that, just hard breathing and fingers on Marty’s shoulder, and an occasional moan, and _oh,_ Marty loved _those_ , they were the best thing he’d ever heard coming from Rust’s mouth. He told himself that he was going to ask Rust later about how to do this properly, or if he couldn’t bear the conversation, he would find useful information on the internet. Yeah, he would do that. And then he’d make Rust take this for _hours_ , or maybe not hours but at least for five minutes, and he’d learn all the tricks, and Rust would walk around thinking about Marty sucking his dick, yeah, that was how it was going to be from now on.  
  
Not this time, though.  
  
“Marty,” Rust said in a rushed voice, clinging into Marty’s shoulder, “pull away.”  
  
Marty definitely wasn’t going to pull away.  
  
“Marty,” Rust said in a more demanding tone that was kind of doing things for Marty’s cock. But then he shoved Marty at the side with his knee, which ruined the effect.  
  
“What the hell?” Marty asked, glancing between Rust’s face and cock. “You were about to –“  
  
“I’m not going to come in your mouth,” Rust said, “not when I just got you to kiss me. Get your hand on me, Marty.”  
  
“I wasn’t going to –“  
  
“Get your hand on me or I’ll jerk myself off,” Rust said in his most bossy voice. Marty hadn’t realized he liked it so much. He took Rust’s dick in his hand and did his best and it took maybe ten seconds for Rust to come in his hand. It was kind of perfect.  
  
“I wasn’t going to panic,” he told Rust later, when he had wiped his hand in the napkin and Rust was breathing properly again.  
  
“You’ll have time to convince me later,” Rust said, stroking Marty’s back lazily. “About once a day.”  
  
“Once?”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“You’ve got to believe in yourself more, man.”  
  
“I don’t believe in myself at all,” Rust said. “I need to go to the bathroom. I’m sticky.”  
  
“Don’t go.”  
  
Rust took a deep breath and draped his arm over Marty’s shoulder, pulling him closer. Marty supposed someone might have called this cuddling.  
  
“I’m going to ask you something,” he told Rust.  
  
Rust sighed.  
  
“I want you to sleep in my bed.”  
  
“Marty,” Rust said slowly, “it’s not even eight o’clock yet.”  
  
“I know. I’m not _stupid_. I meant that if you like, I would very much want you to sleep in my bed tonight.”  
  
“I don’t sleep much.”  
  
“I know that too, you idiot.”  
  
“Your pillow talk is just great,” Rust said. He was brushing his thumb against the line of Marty’s shoulder blades. “I haven’t shared a bed with anyone for ten years.”  
  
“Yeah, it’s not like I’ve been doing it a lot either.”  
  
“What if I wrestle you in my sleep?”  
  
“Then you’ll lose. And you said you don’t sleep.”  
  
Rust was quiet for a moment. “We can try it. But don’t be disappointed if I don’t stay for the whole night.”  
  
“Great,” Marty said and kissed him.  
  
  
**  
  
  
Marty woke up in the middle of the night. The bed was empty. He found Rust in the living room, drawing circles on the ledger. He squeezed Rust’s shoulder and then got back to the bed.  
  
In the morning, Rust was in the bed with him. Marty blinked and rolled onto his side, and Rust glanced at him. Rust’s eyes were wary and sharp. He didn’t look like he’d slept much and also he didn’t seem to be sure if he was supposed to be in Marty’s bed or not. He wasn’t wearing a shirt.  
  
“I kind of love you, man,” Marty said. “And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go brush my teeth, and then I’ll come back and kiss you.”  
  
  
**  
  
  
8.  
  
  
He started jogging. He didn’t particularly like it, but it was just fucking annoying that when he went for a walk with Rust, he was the one who was more exhausted afterwards. It didn’t even make sense. He suspected that Rust had been secretly exercising all the way through his alcoholic years, because the push-ups Rust was doing these days certainly didn’t explain this. So, he bought running tights and ignored Rust’s amusement and after a week gave up the whole thing, because he fucking _hated_ jogging. Then he bought an exercise bike.  
  
“Really?” Rust asked, when Marty dragged the bike to the living room with the very nice guy from the sport store.  
  
“Yeah,” he said, and for fucking once, Rust actually shut up.  
  
A week later, he and Rust dragged the damn thing to the garage. Then Rust started using it. One morning, Marty woke up and Rust wasn’t in the kitchen or in the bathroom or in his own room or in Marty’s bed, even though to be fair he rarely was in Marty’s bed in mornings. He couldn’t sleep past five and apparently lying awake and watching Marty sleeping didn’t seem alluring enough for him.  
  
He often fell asleep in Marty’s bed, though. Marty considered that a victory, and not a small one.  
  
Now, he couldn’t find Rust anywhere. Finally he went to the yard and realized that there was an odd sound coming from the garage. He opened the door. Rust was riding the exercise bike and glanced at Marty like Marty had caught him with a hand on his dick or something.  
  
“Don’t mind me,” Marty said. Rust had nothing on besides boxers and a white tank top, and that with the murderous glint in his eyes made Marty want to kiss him right now. “I’ll just watch.”  
  
“Fuck off,” Rust said.  
  
Marty shook his head. “I never realized you’d be this kind of a man. Not that I’m not happy, because I _am._ But I hope that you realize that you just spent a week complaining about that thing.” Then he went back to the house to let a good argument brew a little.  
  
When Rust came inside, he went straight to the shower. Marty had to knock on the bathroom door for a few times before Rust told him to get the fuck in. The door wasn’t locked, of course. He took off his clothes and threw them out of the door. He didn’t want them to get wet. Then he pushed off the shower curtain.  
  
“You’re ridiculous,” Rust said, turning to him. He had shampoo on his shoulders.  
  
Marty put his hands on the low of Rust’s back and pulled him closer.  
  
“It silences my thoughts,” Rust said, placing one hand behind the back of Marty’s neck, his thumb brushing Marty’s chin.  
  
“It silences your thoughts.” Somehow Marty always seemed to forget about how big Rust’s hands were.  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“You’re talking about the bike?”  
  
“Yeah. What else?”  
  
“The whole idea was that I could exercise,” Marty said, “to keep up with you, young man.”  
  
“I’ll slow down for you,” Rust said.  
  
“This is very worrying,” Marty said. “When you moved in with me, you couldn’t even walk properly. I’m worried that in a few months, you’re going to learn how to fly.”  
  
Rust didn’t seem convinced about Marty’s humor, but then again, Marty had a feeling that Rust wasn’t with him because he was a funny guy. Which he definitely was. But Rust saw something else in him. What _that_ was, he didn’t want to know, because generally he didn’t much care for Rust’s taste in things.  
  
“Can I kiss you?” he asked.  
  
Rust nodded. Marty took a step closer and tilted his chin up to kiss Rust on the mouth. There were so many odd details about this, like the height difference that went the wrong way. If he was being honest with himself, it was doing things for him, because sometimes he realized he was trying to find opportunities to kiss Rust while they were both standing.  
  
Another detail: he still felt weird about kissing Rust. Not too much, and he always forgot about it once they got started. And when the thing escalated, like, when he went down on Rust or had his hand on Rust’s cock or something, he didn’t think about the weirdness, probably because all his braincells were otherwise occupied. There was only so much abstract thinking that he could do when he was trying to get off, and yeah, alright, he had an idea what Rust would’ve said if he’d ever heard that Marty’s idea of _abstract thinking_ was _thinking about kissing Rust._  
  
And it was weird, too, how much he thought about kissing Rust. He was thinking about it more than doing it. It was like someone had put a new thing and an old thing together and mixed them but hadn’t done a very good job about that. The new thing was still new. He could sit on the couch next to Rust, his hand resting on Rust’s thigh, and argue about if it was a complete waste of human conscience to watch sports, but he couldn’t kiss Rust in the middle of the conversation without his heart speeding up first. The practical thing was that when he realized he wanted to kiss Rust, he usually got a little red in the face, and Rust noticed that – a pro of dating the best detective in the state. And then Rust told him to just do it and he did and everything was great, only Rust was terribly mistaken about the sports issue.  
  
He supposed he’d grow used of kissing. He just wished it wouldn’t happen too quickly. There was something nice about trying to build up the courage to kiss your boyfriend who looked like a goddamn movie star.  
  
Yeah, alright, they weren’t using the b-word. They weren’t using any words, because they weren’t talking about this thing to anyone, but Marty supposed that if they were, _partner_ would be just fine. _Partner_ could mean anything or everything.  
  
“What’re you thinking about?” Rust asked now, holding Marty’s head in his hands.  
  
“Sorry,” Marty said and kissed him on the throat. God, he loved Rust’s throat. “Us. I was thinking about us.”  
  
Rust breathed out. It sounded like a laugh.  
  
“I’ll concentrate now.”  
  
“You’d better. You interrupted my shower.”  
  
“Can I –,” he said and took Rust’s cock in his hand.  
  
Rust grabbed his shoulders and turned them around, shoved at Marty a little so that he ended up his back pressed against the tile wall and Rust hovering at his face. God, he loved it when Rust did this. Sometimes he wondered what it would’ve been like if they’d done this when they had been younger and their joints had been in better shape.  
  
“Marty –“  
  
“Sorry, sorry,” he said, “just thinking about your joints.”  
  
Rust kept him against the wall with one hand and pushed the other down, stroking Marty’s stomach with his knuckles on the way.  
  
“Oh, shit, Rust,” he said, “I don’t know if I can stay on my feet if you –“  
  
“Shut up,” Rust said.  
  
In the end, Marty managed to stay on his feet but only because Rust was holding him. Afterwards, he finished the shower with Rust and then they had breakfast.  
  
  
**  
  
  
The next time Macie was in the town, she called Marty and told him she wanted to come over. She said she wanted to see where he and Rust lived, and he panicked a little and said they lived nowhere, and then for the rest of the phone call he tried very much to sound like a sane person, which probably made it worst. Rust was slouched over the kitchen table, working on a case that didn’t need more working on. Maybe he wasn’t listening.  
  
“You sounded half-crazy,” Rust said, when Marty had hung up.  
  
“Fuck you,” he said and poured himself a glass of milk.  
  
Macie came the next evening. She had a bottle of wine and she looked like a tiny adult, and Marty bit his lip and told himself not to cry. He could cry about it later. Sometimes he kind of forgot that his kids weren’t kids anymore. Then he remembered Rust’s kid and kicked himself mentally in the head. He would probably cry about that later, too: that he was so fucking lucky that he got to see his kids being adults who brought a bottle of wine when coming to visit their dad and dad’s new boyfriend.  
  
“You remember Rust,” he said, nodding towards Rust, who was just standing there with a look of quiet discomfort on his face. But Macie probably couldn’t tell that.  
  
“Of course I remember Rust,” Macie said, stepped to Rust and hugged him.  
  
_Oh, god,_ Marty thought. Rust was hugging her back in slow motion, like it took some time to remember what the basic principle was. But Macie didn’t seem to notice that, either. She stepped back and smiled at Rust, said something about how she was happy that they were back together again, Rust and Marty, and Marty glanced at his feet and Rust rubbed the side of nose.  
  
“I’ve been worried about dad,” Macie said to Rust later, when they’d eaten half of pizza Marty had got delivered for the occasion. By then, they had already talked about Macie’s work and her hobbies and Marty’s business and the living room furniture and a lot about the weather. “He was alone for so long,” Macie said. “He always says he’s fine, but anyway, I was a little worried.”  
  
“Macie –,” Marty said.  
  
“I just think this is good,” Macie said and smiled at Rust, who looked like he didn’t remember how to smile back. Marty reached over the table to pat him on the hand, just for silent encouragement, and then he remembered his daughter was right there.  
  
_Goddamn._ “Macie –“  
  
“I know, dad,” she said.  
  
“No, I mean…” Oh, god. This conversation was going to kill him. “Rust and me, I know that you know that we’re old friends, and he’s living with me now, but we aren’t just friends, not really, it’s more like… we’re, like…”  
  
“Shut up, Marty,” Rust said and patted him on the shoulder. “She knows.”  
  
“Yeah,” Macie said, “I _know._ ”  
  
Marty blinked. “ _Oh._ ”  
  
“Yeah,” Macie said.  
  
“Oh. So, you don’t think –“  
  
“I think it’s great, dad,” Macie said, and for a moment she sounded exactly like she had years ago, as a teenager trying to explain to Marty something he just didn’t get. She had always been so patient, definitely had got that from her mother. “I think you two are good for each other.”  
  
“So,” Marty said and cleared his throat, “did your mother say something, or –“  
  
“No,” Macie said, “not exactly. I have _eyes_ , dad.”  
  
“Marty,” Rust said.  
  
“Yeah, alright,” Marty said. Oh, god, this was a little bit moving. “I’m glad that you know, kid.”  
  
“I’m glad you tried to tell me,” Macie said.  
  
“We have cake,” Rust said. “For dessert.”  
  
Marty cleared his throat.  
  
“Chocolate cake,” Rust said. “We tried to make one but it went horribly wrong, so we got one from the supermarket.”  
  
“Sounds good,” Macie said, turning to Rust.  
  
Marty got the cake from the fridge. He wasn’t actually crying or anything. He tried to concentrate on the cake and reminded himself to thank Rust later. Small talk definitely wasn’t Rust’s favorite thing, but it was going great, he was telling Macie about all the unfortunate accidents that had happened when they had been trying to make the cake, and Macie was actually laughing, and Marty had an odd feeling that they were a family.  
  
_Shit,_ he was going to cry again.  
  
  
**  
  
  
“That went well,” he said to Rust, when they were already in bed. Rust was reading a book and he had that look that hinted he was going to fuck off the minute Marty would fall asleep. Marty thought it was incredibly sweet that Rust was pretending for him, even though it was clear Rust wouldn’t sleep for hours.  
  
“Yeah,” Rust said and put the book away. It was about history or something. Marty had told him not to bring existential philosophy to bed. That stuff ruined the mood.  
  
“I think she knows we’re a… couple.”  
  
“Yeah,” Rust said, “she knows.”  
  
“I don’t understand how.”  
  
Rust almost smiled. “I suppose there were clues.”  
  
“Like what?”  
  
“Like, nothing in this house says that two people living here are just roommates.”  
  
“Nothing says that they’re a couple.”  
  
“I’d say two bedside tables say that.”  
  
“She couldn’t have noticed that.”  
  
“Well,” Rust said and rolled onto his side, facing Marty, “I don’t think she needed to.”  
  
“And what’s that supposed to mean?”  
  
“Marty –“  
  
“Just tell me. You’re thinking about something and I want to know what.”  
  
“Alright. The way you look at me sometimes –“  
  
“What?”  
  
“You asked.”  
  
“The way I look at you?” He frowned at Rust. “I think I’d know if I looked at you oddly or something.”  
  
“Well –“  
  
“There’s nothing weird about the way I look at you, man, I look at you like… like a man looks at another man. Perfectly casual.”  
  
Rust shook his head.  
  
“Fuck, Rust,” Marty said and cleared his throat. “You can’t just say things like that. You can’t say that I look at you… I don’t even know how.”  
  
“Well, it’s hard to describe it,” Rust said. “But it’s nice. I don’t mind.”  
  
“So, you think I’m looking at you softly or something?”  
  
“Not the word I would use, but –“  
  
“What? Which word you’d use, then? I know you know more words than me, goddammit, you’ve read all those damn books and I…” Marty took a deep breath. _Shit._ He shouldn’t get himself excited now that he was about to go to sleep. “Maybe I should read more.”  
  
“Who the fuck cares about books,” Rust said. He had a pile of them on the bedside table, and somehow there seemed to be more and more even though Marty didn’t have a fucking clue where all those books were coming from. “Marty?”  
  
“Yeah?”  
  
Rust swallowed. “You know that I… You told me…”  
  
“Yeah?”  
  
“It’s not that I don’t love you,” Rust said, his face all serious now. “I just don’t like the word.”  
  
“Yeah, alright,” Marty said and took his hand.  
  
“It’s let me down before.”  
  
“Yeah, I know.”  
  
“But I don’t want you to think…”  
  
“I don’t think that, man,” Marty said. Rust’s hand was very warm in his. “I’m very happy.”  
  
“Good,” Rust said.  
  
  
  
**  
  
  
There were days when he woke up and Rust was in the bed with him, smelling of coffee and sometimes shampoo. He told Rust he appreciated it very much, but he understood that Rust got up earlier than him and it was alright if Rust wanted to do something else than wait for him to wake up. Rust told him to fuck off and that he was fucking obvious so it wasn’t exactly difficult to figure out when he’d be waking up, and when he did and saw Rust there, his face looked like Rust had bought him a gift or something.  
  
He smiled and kissed Rust. He couldn’t argue about that. He was very happy.


End file.
